In the beginning
by cathrl
Summary: Gordon's struggling to get over his injuries from the hydrofoil crash, but is he just paranoid or is something more going on?
1. Chapter 1

This is TV-verse, but set prior to the TV series starting. I don't have the comics, and have made no attempt to conform to comic canon. It's intended to be canon with respect to the series, though.

All comments are always gladly received, even (especially) if you tell me what didn't work for you.

Thanks to Sam W for beta-reading, and for suggesting Boyd AFB. It doesn't exist, but maybe it will one day.

Edited for medical implausibility. (Thanks, quiller!)

* * *

It didn't surprise Scott that the only letter in the officers' pigeonholes that morning was for him. His grandmother was firmly of the opinion that a real letter was something you could hold, put aside, take out again, reread and keep. None of this electronic nonsense. Scott had to admit that there was something very personal about her letters. From the crisp, scallop-edged cream-coloured paper to the handwritten script (always blue ink) to the inevitable pressed flower folded in the central sheet (man, he'd taken some ribbing for that on his first posting) it was like a little piece of her Kansas farmhouse. You could smell the smoke from the open fire, maybe even her home cooking if you used a little imagination. There had been times on that first posting when he'd buried his face in a letter and done just that. 

This letter wasn't from her.

Scott turned it over in his hands. Indecipherable postmark. Classic white. He didn't recognise the handwriting, but it certainly wasn't either of the two girlfriends he'd had who had indulged in written protestations of their undying affection for his inheritance. They hadn't exactly said that, of course, but it had been obvious, especially in retrospect.

Still, he took it back up to his quarters to open in private. He was as certain as he could be that he'd been careful, but he had no desire to pull out the legal notice of a paternity suit in front of an audience.

Only as the door of his quarters clicked shut did Scott retrieve his letter-opener from the pot on his desk (an antique miniature of a Spanish sword; unsurprisingly, a birthday present from Grandma) and carefully slit open the envelope.

Two sheets of paper fell into his waiting hand. The first was just like the letters he received from Grandma, except for the brownish-orange ink. The second was addressed to him, and now the handwriting was starting to ring bells, although it had greatly improved since the last time he'd seen it. Scott sat down heavily and started to read.

_Dear Scott,_

_You're going to think I'm nuts. I'm not. This is really happening. _

_There's something going on here. Noises and vibrations, and things I can't see. People who don't live here. There's something big going on right under my feet, and Father point blank denies it._

_He's doing something down in the caverns. I don't know what it is, and he's scaring me. I'm sure he'll monitor any transmissions, so I told him Grandma had sent me a page of your letter by mistake. Here's a page of mine. I'd like it back at some point. He might check roughly what I've put in here, but I don't think he'll read it. If he does - well, you won't be seeing this._

_I don't know when you have leave, but please come home soon. I need to talk to someone I can trust. That would be you. Don't let me down._

_Gordon._

Scott read it through a second time, then sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. The worst of it was, he'd been waiting for something like this to happen. Gordon had always been a man of action. Four months in a hospital bed and five more in a wheelchair, with an end so far in the future it was effectively out of sight, would have been tough on anyone. The whole family had been warned to expect personality changes. Paranoia was one of the more common symptoms. He'd just never expected it to be this blatant. He needed a second opinion, and luckily, being a civilian, the person he most wanted to ask carried a cellphone.

* * *

"It has been a while since you went home," Virgil said mildly. "You must have some leave due, don't you?" 

"Well, yes." Scott frowned. "I was coming up to see you. Do you think indulging him's the way to go?"

"I think if anyone can make him see sense, you can. And if he has got a problem, you're more likely to pick it up than Dad is, since you've not seen him in a while." Virgil looked down, and swallowed. "And you should tell Dad, now."

"He'll be horrified."

"I know."

* * *

Scott rubbed a hand across his eyes, sighed, considered dialling his father's number, and headed instead to his tiny kitchen for a cup of coffee. He knew Virgil was right. He also knew he had no idea how to broach the subject. 

'Say, Dad, have you noticed Gordon acting a bit odd recently?'

'Do you remember what Dr Chung said about paranoia? I think it's happening.'

'Gordon thinks you have a secret installation under the house.'

All were horrible.

He almost jumped out of his skin when the phone rang. Thinking it was Virgil with another suggestion, he was momentarily confused to hear his father's voice.

"Scott? I'm glad to catch you. Do you have a minute?"

He glanced at his timetable for confirmation. "Several. What can I do for you, Dad?"

"I'd like you to take your next leave here on the island."

Scott frowned. "It's next week - I'm supposed to be going up to Denver to visit Virgil."

"I know. My next call's to him to apologise. Scott, I don't quite know how to say this, but I need your help with Gordon."

"What kind of help?" queried Scott, thinking frantically.

"He needs better treatment than he can get here. To be blunt, he needs to be back in hospital and he won't go. I thought a couple of weeks here would do him good, and it has, but he's been here for six now. He needs physiotherapy and specialist treatment on a daily basis, but he can't see it. He's got it into his head that I'm trying to get rid of him for some reason."

"Oh." Scott decided to come clean. "That would explain the letter, then."

"Letter?"

"Gordon wrote to me saying, well, you were monitoring everything he did, and asking me to come home. I'll see if I can borrow a jet."

* * *

Heading out over the Pacific in the borrowed trainer, Scott kept wondering what he could do that his father couldn't. Probably not much - but Gordon had used to listen to him, sometimes. It was worth a try. And a week of peace and quiet on the island would be very welcome. 

_That's new_, he thought as he touched down, whisper-light, on what had formerly been a bumpy packed-earth runway. It was still short and rather narrow, but there was plenty of room for a decent pilot to land a small plane. Now, however, it boasted a smooth new tarmac surface, and a set of landing lights. That would explain some of Gordon's comments about people on the island. Tarmac didn't lay itself.

Other families parked cars in front of their houses. Scott's plane joined his father's similar two-seater, as well as the ten-seater corporate jet, parked in a neat line at the end of the runway.

His father was waiting at the top of the steps, arms wide in welcome. "Scott! It's good to have you home, son. Good flight?"

"Just fine. It's good to be home." He waved a hand in the general direction of the planes. "Nice runway."

"I figured we should have something more permanent. That old strip wouldn't have stood up to heavy use, especially in bad weather."

Scott grinned. "What, Virgil wants to land that monster he's designing here? It won't fit between the trees. And even if you cut them down, he'd never get it off the ground in that length."

"With your brother's design skills? He could probably do it." Jeff put an arm round Scott's shoulders and walked him to the house. "Anyway, I'm glad to see you. I'm sure Gordon will be. He must know deep down he needs to go back, Scott. I hope he just needs someone who isn't me to tell him."

"I'll try to talk some sense into him." Scott looked around the living room as they went in. "So where is Gordon, anyway?"

"In his room, I think." Jeff dug in his pocket as his phone started to beep. "Sorry, Scott, I have to take this. Why don't you go find Gordon?"

* * *

His worst fears were confirmed by Gordon's nervous 'who's that?' at his tap on the door. 

"Scott."

"Scott? It's not locked."

He pushed the door open, fixed a reassuring smile on his face, and walked in. "Who were you expecting? The Spanish Inquisition?"

The joke fell flat. Gordon was sitting in his wheelchair by the window, without a shadow of a smile on his face. "Father didn't say you were coming." The tone was accusatory.

"I expect he wanted to surprise you." Scott crossed to his brother's side and gave him as much of a hug as he could. "How's it going, Gordo? You've lost some fibreglass since I saw you last. Just the scaffolding to get rid of now."

His brother finally managed half a smile. "Man, was I glad to get out of that cast. That thing was _hot_."

"I'm sure it was. How's rehab?"

Gordon looked down, his hand tightening on the arm of his chair. "Ask a different question."

_Oh, Lord_. He'd thought that was a safe question, one that could lead nicely onto where his brother should be living. Scott cast his eyes round the room, desperately searching for something innocuous to say, and was saved by another tap at the door.

"Gordon? Scott?" His father's voice was clearly recognisable through the door, and Scott's heart sank as he saw his younger brother tense. "Kyrano's made some tea."

Scott made a face, glanced at Gordon's set expression again, and decided to risk the joke. "I liked it better before he went to England and decided tea was a good idea. Need a hand?"

"No," Gordon ground out, dropped his hands to the wheels of his chair, and pushed for the door hard enough to spin the wheels.

* * *

'Tea' might be what his father had called it, but Kyrano knew Scott far too well. The table held, not just a startlingly English china teapot, but something far more to Scott's liking. A large, fragrant pot of coffee, and a mug large enough to contain a decent quantity of it. Heaven. 

Gordon, he noticed, wasn't asked what he wanted. Kyrano presented him with tea which was more green than brown, and Scott couldn't help but notice his wistful look towards the coffee pot. Gordon had always been a coffee man, from the moment he started drinking anything more grown-up than milk or juice. He guessed it reacted badly with one or more of the multitude of drugs Gordon still had lined up on his bedside table - everything from anti-rejection drugs for the total rebuild job on his right leg, to anti-coagulants to avoid blood clots caused by the best part of a year of immobilisation. And pain-killers. Lots and lots of pain-killers. Poor old Gordon. No wonder he was mixed up.

"So, Scott!" his father said cheerfully. "How's life as a flight instructor?"

"Interesting," he replied carefully.

Jeff's eyebrows went up. "Oh?"

"I'm applying for a transfer. Instructing's okay, but --"

And his father's phone rang again. A single hand raised in apology, and Jeff was gone. He didn't so much as speak into it until the office door was closed behind him.

"Well, at least it's not just me."

Scott pushed his own feelings of hurt rejection down as far as they would go. "Gordon, he runs one of the biggest group of companies on the planet. He gets a lot of calls."

"Yeah. And since I came home, every one is more important than talking to me, and so secret he won't take it if I'm in the room. And there are people here, Scott, on the island."

"About that." Scott turned on his best reassuring tone, the one he used on the pilot candidates he expected to fail. "He's been resurfacing the runway. That would have taken a fair bit of manpower."

"And that needed to be secret?"

"He probably just didn't want you worried."

Gordon snorted in derision. "Well, he failed." He took a sip of his tea, pulled a disgusted face and emptied it into the flowering orchid at his side.

Scott's chest tightened in sympathy. "What does coffee do?"

"It's less conducive to healing than Kyrano's herbal whatever-it-is."

Scott considered the unhappiness in Gordon's tone, weighed it against 'less conducive to healing' and came down firmly on the side of coffee.

Gordon didn't say a word. Didn't so much as reach out for the steaming mug he was offered. Just shut his eyes and shook his head.

"Hey - I won't tell him if you don't."

Gordon swallowed hard, and Scott realised to his horror that his brother was fighting tears.

"Okay, that's it." He flicked the brake off, spun his brother's chair around deftly with one hand, and wheeled him out of the lounge and along the corridor towards his living quarters. Gordon's insistence on being on the ground floor, close to the water, was certainly useful now. Scott pushed the chair straight through his living area and out onto the balcony, before shutting the door and putting the coffee mug into Gordon's hands. "Get that inside you. Then talk."

This time Gordon took it, and Scott wandered to the far end of the balcony and pretended to ignore the small sounds of unhappiness that Gordon was so obviously trying to hide. It was a good five minutes before he cleared his throat, and Scott took that as his cue to turn back.

"Thanks." Gordon held out the empty mug, and Scott took it and abandoned it on the windowsill. "Sorry."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really."

"Gordo --"

"Don't Gordo me! I'm not a kid!"

Scott sighed. "Okay then. Gordon. But I don't see how I can help if you won't tell me what's wrong."

Gordon's laugh was bitter. "Tell you what's wrong? Take a good look at me, Scott. If you can't figure out what's wrong, maybe you're not so bright after all. Oh, and by the way, the runway was already finished by the time I came home. If you want to help, use those legs you still have two of and go find out what's going on."

* * *

And that reaction, Scott thought as he sat on his own balcony and watched the waves, summed it up very nicely. It seemed entirely plausible that Gordon, limited to a single floor of the house and the terrace, would imagine something going on just out of his sight. His father being overwhelmed with work and continually called away couldn't have helped. Gordon might not want to talk about anything that mattered, but that didn't mean he wanted to be alone, and it certainly didn't mean he wanted to be out of the loop. For now, though, Scott felt he needed to be left to calm down. 

He, meanwhile, was two timezones away from where he'd been that morning, and his stomach was saying it was well past suppertime. Scott headed for the kitchen to see what he could persuade out of Kyrano.

* * *

The timezone change, and being used to a military schedule, ensured that Scott was wide awake at a ridiculously early hour the next morning. Nobody else would be up yet, and he wasn't hungry enough to go and play hunt-the-cereal in Kyrano's kitchen. Scott considered the amount of bare sand on display, found himself a set of clothes suitable for running in, and headed down to the beach. 

When the tide was this far out, you could get a surprisingly long way without having to go up onto the bands of rock running down the upper part of the beach. Below the high tide line the sand was flat and solid, and Scott set himself a challenging pace as he headed north.

He didn't stop all the way up to the far end of the beach, a point where the cliffs dropped straight into deep water and even spring tides couldn't expose the sand. Scott went into a flat-out sprint for the final two hundred yards, and then dropped his hands on his knees and gasped for air. He wasn't as fit as he had been, that was for certain. Far too much time spent sitting in offices and lecture rooms, grading papers, talking about flying instead of doing it. He needed to get fit again.

It wasn't until he turned to go back that he noticed the marks. Only visible over a very short distance, between high tide marks. Last night's high tide was two feet further down the sand than usual, and in the narrow strip of hard sand between the two lines there was a double set of tyre marks. Big tyres and wide apart.

And recent, too - if that high-tide mark was older than a couple of days, the sand would have dried out to the fine white powder of the beach just above it, and it was still solid and damp. They had to be less than a day old, and chances were that the lower than usual tide was associated with the unusual wind direction he'd landed into the previous afternoon.

Scott didn't have Virgil's engineering background, but basic physics told him that whatever had come up here had been large and heavy. He followed the tracks up onto the soft sand, but there was no sign of them. This deep powder didn't hold tracks well, but even so he thought there should have been some sign from a vehicle of that size and weight. There was nothing. The sand here was beautifully smooth. Maybe too smooth. Almost as if it had been swept, as if someone had hidden any marks in the dry sand, had expected last night's tide to be high enough to wash away the rest. Scott kept looking back to the marks he could see. They just stopped at the tideline. If Gordon wasn't patently incapable of getting anywhere near this location in his current state, he'd have thought it a practical joke. Right now he'd have given anything to have his little brother's infectious laughter ring out, challenging him to figure out how it had been done.

He sat down on a sun-warmed rock where sand met cliff and thought hard. Scott had already left home when his father had moved from Kansas to the island. He'd only ever come here on holidays, never lived here permanently, and didn't know it that well. Even so, this wasn't far from the house. He'd come up here on several occasions. Gordon had a diving platform up in the rocks somewhere. He'd no memory of this being a route that was used to bring in supplies, but he was fairly sure he remembered a cave in the cliff. It simply wasn't there any more. And then, six feet in front of him and right up against the cliff, he saw a single spot of black. Machine oil in the sand.

_Something strange is going on here_, he thought, and then, _oh man, poor Gordon_. His brother might well be paranoid, hallucinating, in need of psychiatric as well as physical help - but in this, at least, he was right. He was owed a report - and a huge apology. Just as soon as Scott had talked to his father and found out what all the confusion was about. There was still just enough sand to make it back along the beach if he hurried. A shower, some fresh clothes, and it would be a very respectable breakfast time.

* * *

"Your father is working," Kyrano told him. "I fear he is very busy at the moment. Gordon does not come in for breakfast. I have taken him a tray, but at this time each day he has to clean the frame on his leg. It takes him some while, I understand." 

"Oh." Scott took another mouthful of what was truly heavenly coffee. He suspected Gordon would be making do with tea again. "Maybe you can help me then, Kyrano. What was delivered yesterday up near the north cliff?"

Was it Scott's imagination, or did Kyrano pause just a little longer than usual before responding? When he did, it was as calm and unruffled as ever. "Last night? I do not think we had any deliveries then, Scott. Are you expecting something?"

"No. I'm wondering why there are vehicle tracks on the beach, and what happened to the cave entrance which used to be there."

"I have no knowledge of these things. You must speak with your father."

_Well, wouldn't that be nice_, Scott thought, and forced a smile. "Of course, Kyrano. Sorry for bothering you. Oh, is there any more of that coffee? I thought I'd take some to Gordon."

"Of course there is. But it is not so good for him, Scott. The tea will help him to heal."

"I'm sure it will. But he likes coffee. And right now there's not a whole lot he can do that he does like. Being unhappy won't help him heal, surely?"

"Indeed not." Kyrano finally met his eyes. "Perhaps he will drink both?"

"I'll suggest it." Scott took the coffeepot and his own mug, and headed for Gordon's quarters. Rooms, he reminded himself, rooms. No need for military terminology here.

* * *

He found Gordon sitting on the bed with his back to the wall, bent double over the frame on his right leg. The table alongside held a wide range of bottles, and a whole pile of tiny sponges. And an untouched cup of tea. 

"That looks awkward," he offered. "Can I help?"

Gordon barely glanced at him. "No. If it gets infected, it's going to be my own fault." His expression brightened somewhat. "Tell me you brought more coffee?"

Scott nodded, making a space for the pot on the table. "I talked to Kyrano. He says the tea's good for you."

"Does 'good for me' have to taste like sawdust?"

Scott smiled in relief at a flash of the old Gordon. "That's been my experience. Say, you drink that and I'll pour you some coffee to wash it down. It's not doing you any good in the mug - and I noticed how well-watered Father's orchid is."

Gordon straightened up with a groan, reached for the tea, and downed it in four swallows. "Eurch," he shuddered.

"Being cold doesn't improve it?"

"Well - it doesn't smell quite so much." He accepted the new mug and inhaled deeply. "Now that's more like it. Dammit, Scott, I'm sorry about yesterday. I'm a hell of a mess right now."

"Don't apologise," Scott said softly. "I went for a run out to the north cliff this morning. There were vehicle tracks in the sand, and - do you have a map of the island?"

"Map? Second shelf of the bookcase, in the red box file."

Two years as a submariner had done a lot for Gordon's organisation. Scott spread the map out on the free half of the bed, as his brother tucked his good leg up out of the way. 'Good' meaning it had been broken in a mere five places, and only been in a cast for six months.

"Here." Scott found where he'd been, and peered more closely at the details. "I thought so - do you remember the cave at the top of the beach?"

"Sure do. Alan and I went exploring in there last summer. I haven't seen Father so pissed off in years. He was convinced it's unstable."

"It's not there any more."

Gordon paled. "You mean he was right? It's fallen in?"

"I don't think so. There was no sign of rockfall. It looked like solid cliff."

"So there is something going on! Man, I wish I could come and see. Were the tracks standard amphibious?"

"I wouldn't know - and the sea will have washed them away by now."

"How wide?"

"The tyres were about a foot wide, maybe a little more. Ten feet between them. I'd guess four pairs of wheels, but it was hard to tell."

"Tyres? Not tracks?"

"Not tracks."

"Sounds like a T-35." Gordon frowned. "That's a heavy carrier. We...WASP use them to load heavy equipment where there's no dock. Big generators, that sort of thing."

"Not furniture and groceries, then."

"Hell, no. I can't imagine what Father would use a T-35 for. If we had one, which we don't." Gordon slammed both hands down on the bed in frustration. "And caves don't vanish. Dammit, I want to come see for myself. I hate this thing!"

He twisted away from the map, returning to his job of painstakingly cleaning every wire and pin in his leg, and Scott watched him for a couple of minutes in silent sympathy. That had to be the most mindnumbingly awful job ever.

"Do you want me to go?"

"What?" Gordon looked up again. "No, I mostly swear at people when I want them to go. Unless you want to. I'm not much in the way of company."

"I'm just glad you're still here to be company." He paused. "Can I ask how rehab's going now?"

Gordon sighed. "Yeah, I guess - I'd do better with a physio to help me here, but Father won't have it. He insists I need to go back to the mainland for it. I shouldn't complain, he's one hell of a good pilot and he's taken me back every week, but dammit, Scott, that much vibration just hurts."

"How about staying on the mainland for a while?"

Gordon shook his head vehemently. "More hospital? No thanks."

"Well..." Scott had another idea, a compromise he hadn't heard either of the other two mention. "Can't you have a physio live in for a while? It's not like we can't afford it, or the equipment."

Gordon's attention was suddenly fixed on the next pin. "I suggested that. I got the standard lecture on not throwing money about and how I wouldn't even suggest it if I'd ever had to do without."

"Oh, man. Did you tell him how much you hate hospital routine?"

"Yeah, I started to. And then his phone rang." Gordon leant back with a sigh, finally finished. "He just wants rid of me, Scott. I don't know why, and I hate it."

"Let me talk to him, Gordo. Tell him how you feel. Find out what these deliveries are. I know it looks bad, but I'm sure there's some innocent explanation."

"If it's innocent, why won't he tell me? Why does he want me gone?" Gordon sighed again. "I know, I'm hurt, he doesn't want to worry me, and so on. I hope you're right, Scott. I hope he does tell you. I hope you can pin him down for long enough to ask."

"You just leave that to me." Gordon wasn't looking, but Scott smiled at him anyway. "I've got two good legs. He'll find it harder to walk away from me."

* * *

An hour later, Scott had to concede defeat. Not letting Jeff walk away from him was completely irrelevant if he couldn't find him in the first place. He wasn't in the house, on any of the terraces, on the beach, or on the nearby paths. All the planes were still in their positions, as was their ocean-going speedboat. He had to be elsewhere on the island, and Scott knew there was no point even trying to track down someone in the mixture of rock and tropical foliage covering the remainder of the island. 

Or, indeed, wherever that vehicle had gone. Gordon must be realising that he wasn't going back to active military duty. Could his father be working with WASP for some reason, and unwilling to admit it to his son? If so, Jeff needed to know that his concern was doing more harm than good.

* * *

He awoke the following morning to the roar of his father's personal jet taking off, and an apologetic note under his door to the effect that Jeff had been called away urgently and would be back Sunday morning. Scott was initially upset, but rapidly decided it wasn't such a bad thing. This gave him plenty of time to figure out how to proceed. Sunday his father shouldn't be too busy, and he could relax for the next couple of days and have the vacation he so badly needed. If there was a silver lining to this whole mess, it was that he'd briefly managed to forget his own career issues.

* * *

Saturday night Scott was sitting alone in the lounge with a book, one of Virgil's jazz records playing softly. Gordon had, as usual, gone to his own room right after dinner, facing an hour or more cleaning the pin sites and then going straight to bed. It was a surprise, then, when he appeared a little after nine. 

He pushed his chair next to the sofa, and Scott eventually realised that he was eyeing up the manoeuvres needed to get from one to the other.

"Want a hand?"

"Please."

It was more awkward than he'd expected, but he did manage not to drop his brother on the floor, and Gordon didn't look too many shades paler as he adjusted his bad leg to lie along the sofa.

"Good to sit somewhere else for a change?" Scott queried.

"Yes." The word was bitten off, and Scott went back to his reading to let his brother get comfortable in his own time. Something was definitely up, but he knew better than to push.

He didn't have to wait long. It was barely two minutes before Gordon's shifting stopped, followed by a sharp intake of breath and a muttered curse.

This wasn't right. Scott stopped pretending to ignore his brother's misery and was at his side in time to take some of his weight as he shifted again. This time it was followed by a groan, and Gordon doubled forward, face twisted in a grimace, both hands on the left leg that was folded up under him.

"Gordo?"

"Just cramp," his brother groaned.

Scott hesitated. With anyone else he'd have been there, helping them to stretch out the affected limb, massaging the muscle into relaxation. But Gordon's leg was not that long out of a cast, still wasn't weight-bearing, and he found that almost as intimidating as the metal support structure on the other one. Gordon was still in the chair because even in his good leg the bone wasn't completely healed yet. What if, in trying to help, he did more damage?

"Can I get your medication?"

Gordon gave him the sort of look which confirmed that 'just cramp' was a major understatement. "I'm maxed out."

Scott shifted his own position to better support Gordon's awkward, doubled-over pose. "How long till it kicks in?"

"Kicks in? It's run out. Can't take any more for a couple of hours at least."

"I think this might be the time to lose the safety margin and take a double dose."

Gordon groaned again. "So far past that already, Scott. Please..."

"One moment." Scott eased his brother against the cushions, took two long strides to his father's desk, and hit the intercom. "Kyrano? Can you come to the lounge?"

If Kyrano hadn't heard him, it was too bad. Gordon was doubled over, shoulders shaking, obviously in the sort of pain Scott generally tried not to think about. If he could dig his own fingers into the muscle like that, Scott guessed someone else doing it wouldn't be any more damaging.

Gordon gasped and flinched away from his first touch, and Scott almost backed off, telling himself he was going to hurt his brother worse than doing nothing would. He knew it wasn't true. Gordon couldn't take two hours like this. Taking a deep breath, he locked down on his fears, and eased his own hand inside Gordon's desperate grip. "Easy there, bro. Just a bit of cramp. You've had worse in training. Just relax and let me fix it for you."

He'd once done so on a regular basis when Gordon, swimming against people years older than him and twice his bodyweight, had repeatedly pushed himself just that little bit harder than was sensible. For a while, it had been a family joke that should Scott fail on his chosen career path from Air Force through test pilot to NASA, he could always become a professional masseur. Not a good thought. Scott squashed it down hard, and concentrated on helping his brother. He'd been very, very good at it all those years ago, and Gordon had trusted him implicitly.

Something of that must have remained, because Gordon managed to ease his hands away just sufficiently for Scott to slide his own in underneath, wrap them round the tortured calf muscle, and then simply let his fingers remember how this worked.

Gordon had collapsed back against his shoulder, breathing still ragged but just starting to ease, when Kyrano came in.

"Scott- you wanted me?"

He turned to the door without stopping his work on Gordon's leg. "Gordon's got bad cramp, and he can't take any more drugs. Do you have anything that might help?"

Kyrano came over, his lined face full of sympathy. "Are your medications still the same, Gordon?"

"Yeah."

"Then I do have something it is safe for you to take." He smiled. "I will try to make it taste better this time."

It was more than twenty minutes before Gordon finally sighed with relief. "Thanks, Scott. You haven't lost your touch."

Scott sat back up and stretched. "How often does it do that?"

"On and off," Gordon evaded. "Mostly the drugs keep it under control. The specialist said it was a good sign. Hurts like hell, though."

"I saw that. And I'm guessing you're pushing the rehab more than a little." He couldn't keep from glancing at the other leg, encased in its protective metal frame, and Gordon's knowing look gave him no real choice but to ask the question. "What about that one?"

"That one doesn't have enough muscle left in it to cramp." That was a rehearsed answer, no doubt about it. Gordon had wanted to tell someone for a while.

Tell, or ask? "Even so - could it use a massage?"

Right question this time. The remaining tension dissolved from Gordon's face. "I thought you'd never ask."

"I'm not so good at the mind-reading these days." _Scott, you won't hurt him. It's held together with half the Eiffel Tower, for heaven's sake! You know the kid needs a real physio - well, he doesn't have one, and you're the best available. _Scott eased one very gentle hand inside the frame on Gordon's leg and felt with a degree of horror for what had once been a muscle toned to Olympic champion-level strength. Poor old Gordo.

Cramp he could deal with, but this wasn't his forte, not at all. Gordon thanked him, politely but firmly, within a couple of minutes, and Scott could hear the disappointment in his tone. He knew his brother better than to point it out, but saying nothing about it for now, and then suggesting proper treatment later, had to be his best shot at getting Gordon to see sense.

"Does Kyrano's tea help?"

Gordon scowled at the mug he was sipping unenthusiastically from. "I think so. Tastes even worse than the other one, though."

He fell silent, steadily working his way though Kyrano's herbal remedy, and Scott went back to his chair and pretended to read his book, thinking hard. He had to go back tomorrow, that much was non-negotiable. And right now whether or not his father had some secret project going on in the caverns seemed entirely irrelevant. He needed to do what his father had asked him here for in the first place: get Gordon back where he could have the medical help he needed. And there was a possibility which might appeal to Gordon more than going back into hospital.

"Scott?"

His chest tightened in sympathy. "Bad again?"

"No. I need to talk to you."

"Of course you can," he responded automatically, even as his mind panicked about what he'd actually do if Gordon asked him to stay.

"Did you ever get a job you didn't deserve? Because of who Dad is?"

Scott blinked, having not expected that at all. "I don't think so. Dad wouldn't, and I'd never ask. Why?"

"The accident was my fault."

"No! Gordon - no. You know it wasn't. It was a problem with the fuel intermix, remember. That was your co-pilot's responsibility, and in any case they couldn't tell whether it was human error or control failure. And you were piloting that hydrofoil because you were the best. Everyone said that. It's why they abandoned the program. If you couldn't prevent the crash, nobody could. You're surely not suggesting you were selected because of Dad?"

"No." Gordon managed half a smile. "No seas on the moon, not wet ones, and Dad's companies don't do marine. Tracy means nothing in WASP. Hallam, on the other hand..."

"Your co-pilot."

"Was the son of a WASP legend. And wasn't the best man for the job. And I kept my mouth shut." Gordon looked at the floor. "And he died."

"Oh, Gordo." Scott resisted the urge to go over and put an arm round him, as if he were seventeen again and Gordon ten. "Were you involved in choosing him?"

"No. But I didn't speak up. Jim Cunliffe deserved it, but his family run a café in Glasgow."

"You weren't worried about doing four hundred knots with an incompetent co-pilot?"

Gordon shook his head. "That was the problem. He wasn't incompetent, and he was a great guy. I've heard you and John talk about living up to Father's reputation. If I'd made a fuss and had him bumped, I'd have destroyed his career. He was next best after Jim in any case, and Jim was supposed to take the second trial run, he wouldn't have missed out totally...but now I wonder if Jim could have controlled it before we flipped."

"You'll never know that." Scott tried to sound reassuring. "And even if they'd been switched, what if Jim had been sick the morning of the test?"

"I'd have gone with Chris," Gordon said dully.

"Exactly. Hindsight's a bitch. This one wasn't your fault."

"Maybe not." He didn't sound convinced, but there was only so much you could expect from a five minute conversation.

The other issue still had to be raised, though.

"You know I have to leave tomorrow?"

"Already? That went quick."

"Yeah." Scott hesitated briefly, then ploughed on. It had to be said. "And I'm worried about leaving you here. I really think you should come back with me and spend some time in intensive rehab in San Diego."

Gordon stared at him, speechless.

"It would be hospital for a few days, I'm afraid. You've seen my quarters. I can pull strings, though. Get something larger and not up three flights of stairs."

"I..." Gordon looked down. "I don't know what to say. I appreciate the offer. Really I do. But I want to be here. All the time I was in hospital, all I wanted was to be home. I can't give up just because Father's acting odd."

"You're not giving up. You're getting the medical help you need. What if he goes off again? You'd have been in a state if I hadn't been here tonight. And don't tell me that right leg's anything other than downright uncomfortable."

"I'll cope." The slight edge between the matter-of-fact tone suggested that he had, in fact, done so before.

"But you shouldn't have to!" Scott snapped, before forcing himself back to calm. "Tell me you wouldn't feel better with daily physio, and if you weren't worrying about what's going on out of your sight?"

"I would. But hospital routine? Not good. Getting round San Diego in a wheelchair? Worse." He grinned, and the old Gordon was almost back. "Your cooking? Almost as painful as mine." But the attitude was just a little too casual, the voice slightly too high. Staying was indubitably what he wanted - but it was far from perfect. So Scott was back to his first plan. Talk to his father tomorrow morning, see if he'd change his mind on bringing the medical care out here.

Gordon shifted in his seat. "You can help me back into my chair, though. I'm ready to sleep like the dead."

Getting him back into the chair was, if anything, more awkward than getting him out of it had been. Scott sat in Gordon's place on the sofa and stretched until his joints popped.

"There has to be an easier way to do that."

Gordon grimaced. "It's called having at least one weightbearing leg."

"You'll get there, Gordo." Scott pulled himself to his full height and started to wheel his brother towards his room. "So how do you get into bed?"

The expression didn't change. "Carefully." His hands came down to the wheels of the chair, and Scott took the hint.

"Well, I'm off to bed. Shout if you need anything."

His brother snorted. "If you mean 'shout for help when you can't cope' you needn't worry. I'll be flat out for ten hours, easy. Maybe you can forget you've got a crippled brother who needs looking after for that long."

Scott wanted nothing more than to reassure him. To tell him that he would get better. Was already much, much better than he had been four months ago on his release from hospital, still in a powered chair and with his left leg in plaster from the hip down. Five months before that, it had been touch and go as to whether he'd keep either leg at all. Now the question was whether he could get out of the chair. Scott was quite sure that, however long it took, he would make it.

Gordon wasn't in the mood to hear that right now. There were times when absolutely anything anyone said to him would be taken the wrong way, and this was one of them. Much as Scott hated to admit it on his last evening at home, all he could do for now bid his brother goodnight and go his own way.

* * *

He jolted awake to the sound of a jet engine on final approach. Not just any jet engine - this one was unmistakably his father's private plane. Scott rolled over and squinted at the clock. Four-thirty. It wasn't just that his eyes never worked properly until he'd woken up. It really was barely dawn, and his initial plan: to speak to his father the moment he walked through the door, wasn't looking so good. Jeff would come in, go straight to bed, and wake up at the normal time as if he'd never been away. Jet-lag wasn't a word in Jeff Tracy's vocabulary. Scott often wished that was a trait he'd inherited. 

No, a discussion with his father now, still groggy and half-asleep, with his father at the other end of his day and ready to go to bed, would be a recipe for disaster. It could wait four more hours. Scott rolled over, pulled the duvet up around his shoulders, and went back to sleep.

* * *

He strolled into the kitchen some three hours later, forcing a relaxation he didn't feel. Kyrano was presiding over the coffee machine, setting up a tray presumably for Gordon, and his father was sitting at the table. As expected, he looked as fresh as if he'd just had a full night's sleep, not spent most of it flying over the Pacific. 

"Ah - Scott!" Jeff looked up with a smile. "Have you had a relaxing week? I'm sorry I had to go away. We haven't had much chance to talk."

"No. Can we?"

"Talk? Of course, son."

"It's about Gordon."

Jeff frowned. "You haven't been able to persuade him to go back for treatment?"

"No. Dad, he really wants to be here. More than anything. It's not even just the hospital thing, though he hates that too. I suggested he could come stay with me and get treatment in San Diego, not have to live in hospital. He doesn't want to."

"He needs to, though. You do agree with me there, don't you?"

"I do." Scott swallowed. "I know how you feel about spending money rashly - but I think it would make a huge difference to him to have a physio here for a while. He's been through so much. I don't think it's going to turn him into a spendthrift playboy."

"I disagree. It's a pointless self-indulgence. A couple of hours a day from a specialist in a facility with all the equipment, that's what he needs. And what's someone going to do out here? It's not as if Gordon needs full time care."

"Does that matter? Is there really something going on here that Gordon doesn't know about? Because it's starting to sound like that to me."

The frown stayed. "Of course there is. Scott, the last thing I want to do is burden your brother with business details. He needs to put all his energy into getting well."

"But it's not working! He's putting all his energy into worrying why you won't tell him what's going on!"

In the resulting silence, the bleep of Jeff's phone sounded very loud. He flipped it open, and raised apologetic eyes to Scott. "I have to take this."

Scott didn't even think about his reply. "No, you're talking to me. Family matters more than work, Father, you're the one who taught us that."

Jeff's eyes held his for what seemed like forever.

"We know about the deliveries up by the north cliff."

The phone went to his father's mouth. "I'll have to call you back." Eyes never leaving Scott's, he turned the phone off and returned it to his pocket. "Come into my office."

* * *

"Scott, do you trust me?" 

He'd expected something of the sort. Some appeal to the unequal father-son nature of their relationship. Once he'd have backed down in confusion. Even now, the temptation to do so was almost overwhelming. However, these days he was an Air Force captain who had to play superior in this type of conversation on a daily basis. He knew how to stay in control and say what he wanted, not what his father wanted him to say.

"I do. You're approaching the point where Gordon doesn't."

"I see." Jeff steepled his fingers, every inch the patriarch in his leather office chair. "And what has Gordon told you?"

"That you're doing something down in the caves, and you have people working for you. Something involving large, heavy deliveries, up the beach by the north cliff."

"And you want me to tell you, a military officer, what my commercial company's latest R & D project is."

Scott's fists clenched. First the paternal appeal, now the suggestion of a conflict of interests.

"No, of course not."

"Then I'm sorry, Scott, but I don't understand your problem. I guess Gordon really does need to be back in hospital --"

"He does not!"

"Calm down, son."

_He's right_, Scott thought. _Get a grip_. "Dad, he's bored, and his imagination's working overtime. If you think I'm a confidentiality risk, so be it. But Gordon's bored out of his mind, we both know he'll never be fit enough for WASP again, you won't talk to him about this, and he's imagining the worst. Send him away now, and you're going to lose him for good. He wants to help you. Why do you think he wants to be here? It's not like he can go in the water. Please, tell him what you're doing, and figure out a way for him to stay. I don't need to be involved."

Jeff eyed him steadily, but then his shoulders dropped and he looked almost - old. "Maybe I can. Thank you, Scott. Now, if you don't mind, I think I'll take Gordon his breakfast this morning."

Scott smiled at his father, a huge weight at least temporarily lifted from his shoulders. "Take him some coffee too. That way he'll drink the tea first."

* * *

Scott couldn't have been more relieved, but even so his heart was pounding as if he'd faced down an angry lion. Actually, he'd have preferred the lion. He wouldn't have felt guilty about that. Scott had stood up and contradicted his father on a very few occasions in his life, and every time had left him feeling sick and shaky. Even though, like this time, he'd only ever done so after considerable thought, and when he was totally, unshakeably sure that Jeff had made a horrible mistake. 

Out here the weather was blue sky, warm sunshine, a light breeze. San Diego, even in late winter, wasn't exactly unattractive - but right now it wouldn't have taken much persuasion at all for Scott to stay here. He clamped down hard on the traitorous thought. Scott Tracy, absent without leave? He'd never live it down. His father would be mortified. And flying was his life, and if he wanted to make it to test pilot and astronaut, the Air Force was where he had to be. Even if his current assignment was far from what he wanted. Why did he find teaching cadets so much more stressful than teaching his brothers? Jeff had taught Virgil and John to fly, but Scott had taught both of them aerobatics. He'd taught both Gordon and Alan from scratch. Alan had been easy, despite the arguments. Gordon was about as far from a natural pilot as it was possible to get, and had needed more patience than he'd thought he owned, but even so, he'd enjoyed every minute of it.

His current posting as a flight instructor at Boyd Air Force Base, though, all he wanted was for that to be over. His transfer requests were in, his commanding officer had approved them - disappointed though his father's old friend had professed himself to lose his best instructor - and he should be back to real flying in not too many weeks. Either test pilot at Edwards, or an active squadron in Arizona. He hoped that his reaction to his last promotion, taking the only position he'd been offered that still involved any degree of flying, had made his feelings on the matter very clear. Where he was now wasn't for him, though. Regardless of the prestige involved, instructing came a poor second to real flying. The alternatives had been much worse. He wasn't ready for a desk job yet. Commanding the next generation of fighter pilots was all very well, and the offers he'd been given were a huge compliment, but Scott still considered himself very much part of the current generation.

Things would soon be better for him. And since he didn't need to worry about it for another twelve hours, he wasn't going to. He'd sit out here on the beach and soak up enough of the feeling of sun and sand that it would stay with him through the weeks ahead. Things were looking up for Gordon, too. Coming here had been the correct decision.

It really, genuinely hadn't occurred to his father how much Gordon wanted to stay, he decided. There had been times like this when they were younger, when Jeff was so overwhelmed with the demands of his astonishingly successful company that they'd scarcely seen him for weeks at a time. But Grandma had been there then, they'd had each other, and eventually the pressure had eased and Jeff had slipped back into his place at the head of the family as easily as if he'd never gone away. That didn't work so well when there was nobody else to fill his role in the meantime. Gordon wouldn't need much - just to be trusted to be in the same room as the phonecalls would probably do it. Hopefully Jeff had seen that now.

* * *

The two still hadn't emerged by midday, and the longer they stayed together the happier Scott was about it. They were talking. When it came down to it, that was the most important thing Gordon needed. 

He'd decided that lunch was going to be just him and Kyrano, when the kitchen door opened and Gordon wheeled his chair in, Jeff following close behind. "Hey, Scott, leave some for us!"

Scott considered asking how it had gone, and decided against it. That tone of voice from Gordon was the best thing he could have asked for. And, wonder of wonders, it stayed. Gordon spent the meal teasing Scott about building up his fat reserves ready for canteen food, while Jeff put in the occasional comment. His father was more engaged than Scott had seen him all week, and if he and Gordon were trying almost painfully hard to act normal and not mention their discussion of this morning, that was something Scott was prepared to ignore.

All too soon it was over. Scott pushed his chair back with a sigh. "Kyrano, that was great. I don't know how I'm going to survive without your cooking - but I have to go if I'm to get the plane back on time."

"You don't want to be late, son," Jeff told him, as if he was twenty-two and on his first posting again. "You need a perfect record to get the transfers you want."

_Tell me something I don't know_. Scott just smiled as he stood up. "I'll fetch my case, then I'll be going."

"I have to make a couple of calls." Jeff locked eyes with his oldest son. "I won't be more than ten minutes. I will be there to see you off." He left the kitchen at a jog.

"Gordon?" Scott queried the moment their father was out of earshot.

"It's going to be okay." His little brother's face held a look of pure determination. "Really, Scott."

"You're sure? You don't want to come with me?"

"I don't want to come with you." Gordon smiled. "Father's going to get a physio in, and he says he has something he could use my help with. He promises it isn't filing."

"Nobody in his right mind would put you on filing." Scott leant forward, trying to impress on his brother how serious he was. "I'll call on Wednesday. If you've changed your mind, you tell me, understand? I will make arrangements for you to come live with me and get treatment. Promise me."

Gordon nodded. "I promise. Thanks, Scott. But I don't think I'll need to."

"Let's hope not."

There was a brief, awkward pause, before Gordon cleared his throat. "You'd better go check your plane out. I'd come, but I'm not so good at steps yet."

"You'll get there." Scott pulled his brother into a brief hug, before heading to his room. Peace and quiet. Endless empty sky. Perfect weather. All could be his, if he stayed. He picked up his case and carried it out to the plane.

He'd almost have laid money that his father wouldn't re-emerge in time to say goodbye. He was wrong. Scott came round the nose of the plane at the end of his visual check to see Jeff standing at the top of the steps, one hand on Gordon's shoulder. The other gave Scott a cheery wave.

He could stay here and work for his father, help Gordon with his rehab. Fly all he wanted.

No. He was weeks away from transfer. Even though he suspected he wouldn't get the test pilot position this time, he'd be on an active squadron, flying something fast and agile. He could take it one step at a time, by the book. One rejection wasn't the end of the world. His dreams of following in his father's footsteps to NASA were still alive. They'd keep him going until the current crop of trainee pilots graduated. Then they'd be gone, and so would he. Six more weeks. He could do it. The test pilots would forget that Scott Tracy had had the temerity to apply direct to NASA without the usual seniority, and he'd go back to being judged on his flying ability. He was a good pilot. His superiors would realise that he wasn't ready to fly a desk yet, not even a coveted, high-ranking one. He wouldn't be the first of the family to follow in his father's footsteps to space. John would make it to flight crew before him, but that was inevitable now. And seemed a whole lot less important than it had six months earlier.

With one final regretful glance up the steps, he climbed into the plane. His father had taught him to always leave his emotional baggage outside the cockpit, and goodness, he needed to do that now. Gordon's injury, his father's secrets, his own career problems - all left behind. In here all that mattered were flight checks. Oil, fuel, instruments, controls. Scott forced himself into the mode where he could do that, and it wasn't long before he felt the welcome sensation of calm anticipation wash over him. Time to fly.

He made one single pass back low over the island after takeoff. Two figures were still visible on the terrace: one standing, one sitting. As Scott waggled his wings in farewell, he was reasonably sure that both waved.

* * *

(Three days later) 

Scott was starting to worry as he dialled the island for the third time that evening. He'd had no answer on the previous two attempts, which was decidedly odd. It wasn't like Gordon could go anywhere, and even if he had, where was Kyrano?

This time, however, it was picked up after the sixth ring.

"Hey, Scott! How's San Diego?"

"Grey. Wherever have you been? I've been trying to get you for hours!"

"Oh - sorry about that." On the tiny screen, Gordon looked almost shifty. Not unhappy, though. "I was busy. Helping Father."

"So it's working out, then?"

"It's great. And the physio gets here tomorrow, and you should just see her picture!"

Scott's laugh was pure relief. "She's probably cruel and heartless, and engaged to a...a movie star." He'd been going to say 'superstar athlete', but just barely caught himself in time. "Anyway, any problems, you let me know, okay? I meant what I said. I'll be back to get you."

"I know you would. Thanks for everything, Scott. It's fixed." He looked sideways, out of range of the screen. "Yeah, I'm coming. Sorry, Scott, I have to go. I'll call you again." And the screen went blank.

Scott stood there for some while, watching the drips run down the window. The island never had rain like this. Nor did Arizona, though - and he'd be there in six weeks, if all went to plan. For now, he'd just hang on. Three trainees to check out on the new twin-engined jet, as soon as the rain stopped. He told himself it would be fun, slipped on his uniform jacket, and headed across to the flight school.


	2. Chapter 2

As always, nothing that's canon belongs to me.

Thanks are due to my husband for suggestions, to SamW for betaing, and a special mention to Phil from TIWF for a fascinating discussion on what the numbers in an aircraft's top speed actually mean.

* * *

"Captain Tracy, report to Colonel Crane's office at once."

Scott stopped in his discussion of in-flight refuelling with the new crop of cadets mid-sentence, and crossed to the intercom. "I'm on my way." He clicked it off, and pitched his voice to reach the other side of the room. " Lieutenant Sharper?"

"Yes, Captain?" his assistant said from the back of the room.

"Give these gentlemen the benefit of your practical experience."

"Sir?"

"Tell them what it's like for real." Scott turned on his heel and walked out.

* * *

"Captain Tracy reporting as ordered, sir." 

"Oh, Scott." Colonel Crane, who'd been his father's wingman years before, waved him to a seat. With that form of address, he brought Scott back twenty-five years, before Jeff had even been to the moon. He'd called this man 'Uncle Adam' then.

"Are you sure this is what you want to do?" Crane asked him, displaying the letter Scott had left for him a couple of hours earlier.

"I'm sure. Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Of course."

"The test pilots won't have me because I applied to NASA and not them first. My record's good, but it's not NASA quality, not yet. And I've been doing some asking around. People who I trust have told me that some very high-powered decision-makers have decided that Jeff Tracy's heir isn't to be risked anywhere dangerous, not again. I don't want the desk job commands they're offering me. And - sorry to be blunt, sir - but while instructing's fine, it's obviously going to be all the flying I get for the next twenty years if I stay. I know training the next generation's important and all that. I just think I'm still part of that next generation."

"I understand." Crane folded his hands on the desk in front of him, sympathy in his lined face. "At your age, I'd have felt just the same. And - strictly off the record - it's been made clear to me that I should dissuade you from these transfer requests to active squadrons. But instructing is a worthwhile job - and there are other things that don't involve being on the front line. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. You'd make a fine display team pilot."

Scott shook his head, not even having to think about that one. "No, sir."

"I know how you feel about them. Your father was just the same. Will you at least think it over? I know you have leave next week, and I guess you're going home. Don't make your final decision just yet. Tell me when you get back. If you change your mind, I'll forget this letter ever existed."

* * *

"Captain Tracy!" a voice called after him as he strode across the hallway. "Messages for you." 

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Scott said automatically as he took the pile from her and flicked through them. Two reports for him to sign off on - not a problem, he was only confirming that he knew they'd been handed in, and he signed them there and then and handed them back to her. One request for his formal opinion on Cadet Jameson - that would take longer, the kid was struggling, but he wasn't, in Scott's opinion, a washout. Not yet. He just needed a little more time to find his feet. One personal message, smaller than the standard military paperwork. That went in his pocket. And a form for him to fill in giving his assessment of this posting and his career progression. Again, that was going to take him a long time. If he wrote what he'd have liked to, he'd be ending his career for sure, and not on a good note.

"Sir - is everything all right?"

Scott forced relaxation back into his expression and favoured the young woman with a smile. She, he was fairly sure, had a serious crush on him, and if he hadn't been her superior officer he'd have been seriously tempted to ask her out. Maybe in a couple of months time he'd be able to.

"Yes, fine. I should be with a class - do I need to deal with anything else right now?"

"No, sir. But - you're away on leave next week, sir? Can I have the student report back before you go?"

"I'll do it this afternoon. See you later, Lieutenant." He left her standing, dreamy-eyed, and headed back for his class of cadets, mentally phrasing his assessment report.

* * *

He got back to his class to find Richard Sharper sitting on the desk telling horror stories about basket strikes to a wide-eyed bunch of cadet pilots. Scott just leant in the doorway and listened in amusement. Everyone who made it as far as his class had one thing in common: the arrogance of a young pilot who hasn't yet learnt that he doesn't know everything. Scott's job here, while not quite to scare them silly, was to make them realise quite how dangerous military flying could be. 

Yeah. So dangerous, that he wasn't allowed to do it any more.

Scott cleared his throat. "That's all well and good, Lieutenant. Now, how about telling them how to avoid it happening?"

Sharper started, flushed, and jumped to his feet while recovering his clipboard from the desk. "As the captain said, gentlemen. You need to have this memorised..."

* * *

Now Sharper would make a good senior instructor, Scott thought on his way back to his quarters after the last class of the day was finished. Great, precise pilot but, by his own admission, none too fond of being shot at. Not that Scott actively enjoyed being shot at, of course - just that, if it was going to happen at all, he'd rather he was the one it was happening to. He wanted to be right there. Not just making the decisions, but putting them into action. 

Once his apartment door was shut behind him, Scott drew a shaky breath before hanging his uniform jacket meticulously in the cupboard. One uncomfortable interview was out of the way. Now, if only Crane really would forget that the letter existed for the next few days then, just for once, the discussion with his father wouldn't involve telling Jeff Tracy something he already knew. The way the military grapevine worked, he didn't think he'd ever had that experience before. And the very last thing he wanted to do was give his father time to think about it beforehand. He might decide that now was the time that Scott should start getting some of that business experience that the heir to Tracy Industries was going to need one day.

He'd almost forgotten the message until he was reminded of its presence by the unfamiliar crinkling in his pocket.

_Could use a lift home tomorrow. Wait for me? John._

Well, he hadn't heard that John had leave coming up, but that would kill two birds with one stone very nicely. John had commented on more than one occasion that his discussions with senior NASA officials invariably started 'I thought your name was Scott?' If nothing else, it would make John's life a darn sight simpler to be able to explain that Scott wasn't in NASA, rather than trying to balance that statement with 'but he will be, first chance he gets'.

He rang John's Florida number, but got no answer. He didn't bother leaving a message. Chances were, his brother had already left and would be spending the night in a hotel somewhere in San Diego. Scott could probably have tracked him down if he'd tried, then again, if John wanted company this evening, he knew where Scott lived. And there was plenty of packing to be done. He might have agreed not to confirm his decision yet, but in Scott's mind it was pretty much final. He would be coming back for the last few weeks of this cadet course, but that would be it. Since he was going home, and taking the corporate jet which his father had brought over the week before for its annual overhaul, he might as well use some of the extra space to transfer excess belongings. Junk accumulated, no matter how he tried to stay on top of it. The days when he'd lived out of a single suitcase were long gone.

So, packing. Scott intended to get on with it quickly, but found himself lost in the old papers. Years-worth of letters from Grandma. Promotion notices. Notifications of new postings. More recently, notifications of rejected requests for transfer. The letter telling him of his medal award. And a whole envelope marked 'San Diego AFB'. He had to smile at that one. Especially at the scrawl in a different coloured ink under the initial tidy label. 'Boyd. Yeah!' Much, much better than the politician they'd initially wanted to name the Air Force's newest training base after. The guy hadn't even been a pilot! Scott had been appointed as spokesman for a group pushing for it to be named after a long-dead airman, a maverick in his time, but possibly (to pilots) the most influential person never to be honoured in the naming program. At the time he'd not been posted here, never even visited it. It was ironic that it would be his last posting.

He'd only discovered much later that a second group, based over in Florida, had been campaigning for it to be called after a certain recently retired pilot and astronaut. 'Boyd' had won out. Scott had never dared ask his father how he felt about not only being slighted, but having his eldest son nominate the other guy. Then again, he'd first heard of John Boyd from his father, so hopefully he hadn't been too offended.

That envelope went into the box, followed by a selection of the books he'd accumulated over the years. Some of them he couldn't bear to get rid of, but he wasn't going to read them in the next few weeks. Others weren't worth the aviation fuel to get them home. He'd ask his fellow instructors if they wanted any of them, give the rest to charity.

He caught himself removing a picture from the wall, and stopped. The books and papers should be going home in any case - he had far too much junk here. If he stayed in the Air Force, these pictures would be going with him to the next posting. Both the one in his hand, of his mother and father on their wedding day, and the one next to it, of Grandma and her husband, the grandfather he barely remembered. He'd said he would reconsider his decision, think about the display team thing. Clearing out his personal belongings now would effectively mean he'd gone back on that promise, only hours after making it. No, he'd leave the pictures here for now, stop the packing before he found it confirming his decision for him, and go to bed. Always assuming John managed to crawl out of bed and make his way here before midday, it would be good to make an early start.

* * *

He surfaced groggily to a loud banging on his door. Thinking there was some catastrophe at the base, Scott hurled himself out of bed and was somewhat taken aback to find John outside. 

"Did I oversleep?"

His brother looked somewhat abashed. "Only if you're in Florida. I know what you're like for getting up early, and I wasn't sure you'd got my message, so I thought I'd best come find you."

Scott squinted blearily at him. "You could have left a message at the airfield. What time is it anyway?"

"Nearly five-thirty."

"Sadist." Scott stepped back with a sigh. "Well, I'm awake now. You may as well come in. As penance, you can make the coffee while I get dressed."

"It's eight-thirty in Florida." John's voice came through the bedroom door as Scott dug in the civilian half of his wardrobe for a shirt. "You don't mind making an early start, do you?"

"I'd planned to. Maybe not quite this early." He'd never thought John would want to - although he had forgotten the time difference. He was still surprised John hadn't taken the opportunity to sleep in. He'd said on a number of occasions that it was far and away the best part of leave. He still seemed to feel the need to do so in the company of his family rather than staying in Florida, so Scott didn't take it as an insult.

"I already put my stuff in the plane." There were clattering sounds, and then the hisses and splurts of the coffee maker. "Are you moving out? I thought you had a couple of months to go yet."

"I do." John never missed a trick, and the box in the centre of the living area was a dead giveaway. Thank goodness he had left the pictures on the wall. "That's just some old paperwork to take back to the island."

"You won't need it for your next posting?"

Scott was very glad that the door between them was closed. He knew he had flinched at that, and took his time replying. "No, I won't."

"So where are you off to next?"

This one he'd thought about it, knowing full well John would ask. "I'll tell you when we get to the island. I want Dad to hear first."

"Oh..." There was a pause. "Sounds like congratulations are due." He didn't sound entirely convinced, but maybe it was just the door. Or maybe he thought he was about to be the younger Tracy at NASA, and wasn't as happy about the idea as he'd always claimed. Interesting. Irrelevant, sadly, but interesting. Scott had always thought John self-motivated enough to be entirely undisturbed by what the rest of his brothers did or didn't do. He'd envied the way John calmly bypassed any suggestion that he was in NASA due to nepotism - then again, John was training to be a mission specialist. Jeff had been a pilot, coming in through the military route. It was Scott's career that was the mirror of his father's - or might have been.

Or maybe he'd imagined the change in tone. John's "Coffee's ready" was said in an entirely normal voice.

Scott pulled on his second shoe. "Excellent."

He came out just in time to see John slip something into his pocket. There was a glass of water on the counter, and Scott put two and two together.

"Pills?"

"Bit of a headache, that's all." He sounded defensive, and Scott mentally translated it to 'headache that could crack concrete and not enough sleep.'

"I'll fly, you can get some rest on the plane." He downed the remains of his coffee, stretched, and stood up. "Can you do the dishes? I'll call a cab. I'd been offered a ride, but I don't think I'd be popular this early."

* * *

Ten minutes later saw the two of them in the back of a cab, speeding the mile or so round the airbase to the civilian airfield beyond. Scott felt faintly ridiculous driving such a short distance, but there was his suitcase, the box of his old books and papers, and a whole pile of parcels that Gordon had ordered and had sent to his quarters when he'd discovered Scott was coming home today. Foreign language texts, mostly. Scott had raised his eyebrows, wondered briefly what had possessed Gordon to decide he should learn Chinese - or indeed, come over his father to suggest it - and decided it was one of those things he wasn't even going to ask about. The trunk of the cab wasn't exactly overflowing, but it was more than he could carry any distance. Walking hadn't been an option. 

John directed the driver to the correct set of buildings, and paid him off while Scott struggled boxes out of the trunk to the steps of the jet. It had been in solely for a standard airworthiness check, but as usual the Tracy name seemed to have turned that into the sort of detail job which had the paintwork almost too bright to look at. He must remember to tell his father. He was never quite sure whether effectively paying for work they'd never asked for was a good thing or not - he was entirely sure that the extra work was done in expectation of a Tracy-sized tip - but well, aircraft mechanics weren't exactly overpaid, and keeping them happy couldn't be a bad thing.

As the cab left, John wandered over, dangling a key from one finger. "This what you need? I picked it up already."

"You were lucky anyone was around for you to collect it from." Scott took it from him, unlocked the door to the jet's passenger cabin, and blanched at the array of boxes already stacked in the back seats. "You leaving Florida or something?"

John looked away. "You're not the only one who needs to speak to Father first."

Scott took a good look at his brother for the first time that morning. Decidedly pink around eyes and nose, and now that he thought about it, he had seen John sneeze several times.

"John, are you sick?"

"No. Not sick." His brother's jaw clamped shut, and Scott left it, depositing the new luggage alongside the rest and heading for the pilot's seat and clearance to take off. Always assuming the tower was even awake at this time of the morning. The fine weather was in their favour, at least.

John didn't seem in any hurry to join him, and Scott decided the headache must indeed be worse than he'd admitted and he'd decided to get some of that rest in the wide corporate seats of the back of the family ten-seater. But - why was John shipping all his stuff back to the island? That had to mean a topside posting. One of the stations, maybe the moon, or a long-haul exploration mission. John was barely twenty-three. Wow.

The tower proclaimed itself awake - not only that, but the controllers were apparently bored and in need of something to do. Scott was shortly taxiing towards the end of the runway, reminding himself that this was a relatively large and underpowered plane which would not respond well to being treated like an F-22. Not his favourite ride, or his father's either, but sometimes you needed practical rather than fun. This wasn't the day for aerobatics.

No, this was the day for calm, level flight. Scott coaxed the executive jet into the air, made a textbook right turn, and headed out over the ocean bidding the tower a cheery farewell. A perfect spring morning and a completely empty sky did a lot to make up for the less than manoeuvrable plane he was piloting.

Especially since he knew full well it wasn't going to last. The weather systems on the last third of the route to Tracy Island looked to be their usual mess for this time of year, a choppy confusion between smooth high pressure and the low pressure storms of the higher latitudes. Gordon absolutely loathed the trip across the equator to the US mainland in the northern hemisphere's spring. Scott considered it a challenge to find a fast line with a following wind at all times, avoiding the main areas of turbulence and sudden drags. The first part of the flight he'd be sober and sensible. The last part should be more fun.

He was rather enjoying it, long swooping curves down, finding an updraft to help him to soar back to high altitude, when John came into the cockpit and dropped heavily into the co-pilot's seat.

"Nice ride?" Scott asked him, one eye on the altimeter and the other on the clouds.

"No." It was bitten off in such a way that Scott glanced sideways in utter disbelief.

Gordon he'd have expected this from. In fact, if Gordon had been his passenger, he'd never have indulged. Virgil might have objected, just maybe, if he'd been off-colour to start with. But this was John next to him, the colour of old milk, eyes fixed on the horizon and swallowing desperately. It couldn't be happening. John had, if it was possible, an even more iron stomach than Scott did. He'd been one of very few to make it through NASA's basic training without throwing up. Turbulence simply didn't make him sick. And yet...

Scott levelled off, very gently, at the top of the curve, and held it there while he changed the required parameters for the weather computer. Sort by altitude, not streamlines. Cross-reference mentally with windspeeds and directions, and avoid anything which looked like a sudden pressure drop. John was in luck. The optimum altitude was only slightly below where they were right now. He cast a nervous glance to his right.

"I need to lose two thousand feet."

"Do it," John said, tight-lipped.

Scott did so, as cautiously and steadily as he could, and was rewarded by what felt like the reasonably steady airflow the computer had predicted. The plane settled, and Scott turned his attention to his brother.

"What's up?"

John's horizon-fixed gaze didn't shift. "What's it look like?"

"Like something that's never affected you."

"I --" The airflow decided it wasn't so stable after all, and his jaw locked hard. "Scott, please just fly the plane. How long until we land?"

"Fifteen minutes. Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah. If you hold this damn machine steady."

Scott went back to doing just that, utterly confused. He couldn't get beyond 'but John doesn't get airsick'. He had now, big time. Scott had rarely seen anyone quite that shade of green - and he'd seen an awful lot of rookie pilots throw up in the back seat. He wasn't at all sure John was going to last five minutes, let alone fifteen.

His next glance showed his brother sitting forwards, elbow on knees and hand supporting his forehead, presumably staring at the newly appeared speck on the horizon. Even from this distance, the shape was unmistakable. That perfect rocky cone, not quite as symmetrical as it looked from here, rising out of a strictly limited flatter area to one side of it. On the other, it plunged straight into the ocean.

He knew he shouldn't distract John, but in the end he had no choice. "Coming round to land."

"Okay," John muttered, and shifted carefully back in his seat to fasten the seatbelts.

Scott couldn't worry about him. This was not an easy approach. The runway was situated according to geology, not prevailing wind, and as usual, the wind direction today was almost entirely wrong. Plus, the runway was short. Not problem-short, not for any halfway decent pilot let alone one as good as Scott, but the approach required wasn't the easiest on an unhappy stomach. Scott weighed up the relative merits of stall-and-drop-it-on-the-tarmac and land-as-slow-as-you-can-and-hit-the-brakes-hard, and decided on a combination.

He touched down moderately gently only feet from the start of the runway, hit the brakes smoothly and only as hard as needed, and brought the jet to a halt just in front of the rock wall at the runway's end feeling really rather pleased with himself. A perfect be-nice-to-your-passengers landing.

John rewarded his care with a frantic bolt for the door, throwing it open with a clang which had Scott wincing for the newly polished paintwork, a leap to the ground completely ignoring the extending steps, and a staggering sprint to just behind the nearest palm tree. Scott could no longer see him there, but as the roar of the jet engines died, the sounds of someone being violently, thoroughly ill were unmistakable.

He didn't get it. He just didn't get it. Could John have been out celebrating the night before? It wasn't like him, but maybe if he'd had majorly good news? Perhaps he hadn't been up early, he simply hadn't been to bed? He hadn't looked drunk or hung-over, though, except for that slight wrongness around the eyes. Maybe it was so long since he'd had a serious amount of alcohol that just a couple of drinks had made him queasy? But John didn't get queasy.

Scott gave up speculating and settled to shutting down the jet. He took his time over it, but even so John hadn't shown by the time he'd finished. And he'd taken as much time as he reasonably could.

The boxes could wait. Scott slung John's overnight bag over one shoulder, picked up his own suitcase, and climbed out of the jet a whole lot more carefully than John had.

His brother was lying on his back on the tarmac, knees drawn up, still very pale but somewhat less green. Better than he had been, at least.

"Coming?" Scott asked, extending a hand.

John groaned. "Yeah. Thanks." He accepted the hand and dragged himself to his feet, but the remaining colour drained from his face as he reached vertical and Scott hastily abandoned the suitcase to steady him.

"Man, John, you've got to tell me what you were drinking last night so I can stay away from it. Are you up to the steps, or shall I send the elevator down?"

John's face wore a look of horrified embarrassment. "I'll be fine if I go slow. You get on up there before Father decides you've rammed the cliff face."

It wasn't a great joke, but it was very much John, and Scott figured he could safely leave him to make his own way up the zigzagging flight of steps to the house. He could take a glance back down when he reached the top and make sure John had at least started up.

Scott walked up the steps at a brisk pace - figuring that two sets of luggage was a reasonable excuse for not running, though Alan would never have agreed - and once at the top, glanced casually back to see John about a third of the way up.

He turned back to see Gordon walking towards him.

Gordon. Walking. It took more than a moment for that to sink in, and even when it did, he could do nothing more than stand and stare open-mouthed. Gordon was slow, very hesitant, and the brace on his right leg went from hip to ankle with a hinge at the knee strong enough to support an aircraft door, but still, he was walking without a crutch or a stick in sight. Scott hadn't expected to see his brother on his feet for months yet. Without assistance, maybe never.

Gordon's progress was getting rapidly slower and more unsteady, though, and Scott dumped both bags on the floor and hurried to support his second wobbly brother in five minutes. Not a moment too soon. Gordon swayed as he arrived, and practically fell into his arms.

"What do you think?"

Scott bit back his first response, which had been to yell at his brother for pushing himself too hard, and considered the pure delight in Gordon's voice. He couldn't slap that down. He just couldn't.

"I'm speechless. Gordo - how long have you been out of the chair? Hell, how long have you been out of the scaffolding? You kept that quiet."

"Couple of weeks." Gordon steadied himself against Scott's shoulder and, somewhat gingerly in Scott's opinion, stood up straight again. "I thought I'd surprise you."

"You did that." Scott gave his stance a long, hard look. "I'm amazed. Impressed beyond belief. Now, be honest, do you need a shoulder to make it back inside?"

Gordon's smile was more than a little rueful. "It would help."

"Come on, then." The bags could wait. Scott let his brother set the pace, and supported him at a slow limp back into the house and all the way to a sofa.

There was a pair of crutches lying on the floor there, to Scott's complete lack of surprise. Gordon might have been determined to greet him standing on his own two feet, but he blatantly wasn't up to walking about without assistance yet. In fact, he'd sagged onto the sofa and stretched his right leg out in almost the mirror posture of one Scott remembered well from his last visit, and was now busily undoing a whole series of straps holding the brace to his leg.

"Good to see you back, son," his father said from behind his desk. "I said I'd let Gordon do the greeting today."

"I can see why. I think it's great." Scott sat down alongside Gordon. "Want help?"

"I wouldn't say no."

Gordon finished removing the brace, dumping it on the floor alongside the sofa, and Scott felt for the calf muscle in some trepidation. Eight weeks ago there had been next to nothing there. That was no longer true. It was still weak and wasted, but much better than it had been. There was enough muscle there to be seriously considering cramping, for a start.

"So how long have you been on your feet?"

Gordon flushed. "About a week."

"I wasn't expecting to see you out of the frame yet. Last I heard, it was going to be another couple of months to get your leg back to full length."

"Yeah." Gordon stiffened. "It's not full length, and it's not going to be. I made the decision that I could live with one leg shorter than the other. I couldn't live with that frame any more." There was a sideways glance, still uncertain, at his father, followed by another one at Scott himself.

Reassurance was definitely needed. "I hadn't even noticed, Gordo. And - you're walking! That's beyond fantastic. I was so surprised I...I..."

"Forgot to mention you'd given your brother a lift home?"

Scott swung round. Yes. He had forgotten everything in the sheer astonishment of seeing Gordon on his feet. Now John was standing in the doorway, a bag in one hand and a suitcase in the other, looking more than a little bemused.

"Hi, folks. Scott, you seem to have dropped everything."

"I was busy catching Gordon." Scott belatedly realised that his younger brother was looking particularly unimpressed with him, and with good reason. "Sorry, Gordo. I guess you'd rather have waited out there for two minutes more and impressed John too? I wasn't kidding. You really did shock me enough that I forgot he was here."

Gordon's face cleared. "I can always show him later. Say, John, I didn't know you were coming home?"

"Neither did I." Jeff smiled warmly at his son. "It is that time of year when NASA gives out assignments. Do you have something to tell us?"

John's voice said, "Yes." His body language, everything from his expression to the stiff unhappiness of his posture, screamed 'no'. And Scott sat forward, Gordon's leg forgotten, every alarm in his body going off.

"There's no right way to say this." John's eyes were fixed on the pictures on the wall, his voice much too high and fast. "NASA has revoked my active status."

"No way!" Gordon exploded in indignation.

"Son, tell me what happened." Jeff stood up, extending his hand. "Maybe I can help."

"Not unless you can fix adult onset acute allergic rhinitis." He spat out the words, bitter and miserable.

"Adult...what?" Gordon asked the question. Scott was still seeing a plane half full of boxes. This wasn't a temporary problem. John wasn't going back.

John snorted. "Adult onset acute allergic rhinitis. It's a fancy name for the hayfever from hell."

"And this is an issue in space because?" Gordon was in the mood where his family was always right and everyone else was wrong. It had worked on their schoolfriends, sometimes. It wasn't at all the right line to take with John, not when he was like this.

"What, you think it's all like in the movies?" John's tone dripped sarcasm, and Gordon flinched back, wide-eyed. "Nice clean spaceships, perfect air? You're wrong. Recycled air is vile. It's full of dust and chemicals and moisture droplets, and if anything goes wrong it gets much worse very quickly. They made the right call."

"Son, I'm sure we can find a specialist who can --"

John cut Jeff off, flushing the spectacular crimson which only the very blond can achieve. "About that. I'm afraid I've been using your name. The medical bills will start arriving any day now. Not that they could do anything for me."

"John --"

"I'll pay it back, okay? I don't know how, or when, but I guess I can find someone who'll take on a washed up rocket jock who can't breathe without drugs and...and can't even ride in a car without throwing up when he takes them!" He bolted to the side door, out onto the balcony, and hung over the rail, his head in his hands.

Scott started to get to his feet, but Jeff stopped him with a wave of his hand. "Let me handle this, son."

Scott nodded, and Jeff walked out after John, closing the door behind him. He couldn't hear anything, but through the window Scott saw a brief exchange, John never looking round, and then Jeff simply put an arm round his son and the two of them stood there in silence.

"Hay fever?" Gordon queried. "That's crazy. Where the hell did he get that from?"

"Mother used to get it," Scott said slowly. "It's genetic - I think."

"But it can't be that bad! Not bad enough to invalid him out. It's treatable. I'm sure it is."

"Gordon, I don't think you're helping. He's obviously tried everything."

"Helping? Maybe not." Gordon smiled ruefully. "He looked to me like he needed someone to yell at. You really think I don't know what recycled air's like? And at least we could open the hatches and get some fresh air in when we surfaced. Can't do that on the moon. But there are drugs. I've known people who took them. You'd never tell."

"NASA's different." Scott stared into the distance. "They have so many candidates they don't have to consider whether someone with a problem could still do the job. They take the best few. Even needing the drugs means John's no longer one of them."

He'd thought John would have good news to make up for his own. Instead it was even worse, and saying anything now would be a second hammer-blow. But - would saying nothing be even worse? What if Adam Crane had already spoken to his father? Should he wait for a better time? Would there even be one?

In the event, it was a non-decision. Jeff guided a white-faced, swollen-eyed John back into the living area a few minutes later, and the very first thing John said was, "It's up to you to make it to astronaut now, Scott."

"Alan. Not me." Scott gritted his teeth, set his eyes on the same picture John had used, and forced himself to keep going. "If I don't get the transfer I ask for this time - and chances are, I won't - I'm resigning my commission."

"What?" John stared at him, eyes huge in his pale face. "But...you're so close! What happened?"

"I don't exactly know, but I think they've got cold feet." Scott didn't think he'd ever have all the details, but the basics had become gradually, painfully obvious to him over the past few weeks. "The Air Force won't put me anywhere remotely risky. They want to promote me to a nice safe desk job. Instructing or paperwork is all I'm being offered. I just want to fly."

"NASA --" Gordon started.

"My flight record's not NASA quality for pilot, my academic record's not good enough for mission specialist, and even if they were I have my suspicions I'd just hit the same wall. They had so much bad publicity over Tim Carson's accident."

"The senator's son?"

"That's the one. Nobody will say it out loud, but they're not going to risk Jeff Tracy's heir."

"One of the spares was fine, though." The bitterness was back in John's voice.

"Damn, John, I didn't mean for it to sound like that!" Scott held his hands up in apology. "I don't know, okay? I just know I've been told I'm wasting my time trying for something they're not going to give me without me being a standout candidate who they couldn't ignore. And I'm not, not in NASA terms. I'm damn good, but they'll go on just fine without me."

"What are you planning to do, son?" Jeff asked him.

"Adam Crane suggested I think about trying for a display team."

"Blue Angels?" Gordon asked, and Scott was forced to laugh.

"They're _Navy_, Gordon. Thunderbirds is the Air Force team. But I don't think I want to stay in the military at all. There's a British company building hypersonic passenger jets and advertising for test pilots. I thought I'd try them."

"British?" Jeff frowned.

"The military test pilots decide between themselves who's going to get the prime US civilian jobs - all the incumbents are ex military, so the system carries on the way it's always been. It's a closed shop. I have no way into it."

"Father?" Gordon asked urgently.

Jeff shook his head.

"I don't need you to get involved, sir. I'm sure Commander Crane will give me a reference."

"Father!"

"No, Gordon."

At the limit of his self-control, Scott stared down his younger brother. "Gordon, the last thing I need is him getting involved. Let it go."

Gordon looked from him to John, and back again. "Father, if you don't tell them, I will!"

"Tell us what?" Scott could see the suspicion in John's eyes, and his own was starting to build.

"So help me, Father, if I find out you're behind any of this --"

"No, Scott." It was the voice he'd trusted since before he understood what words were. He still did. "I have heard rumours, though. I'd hoped they would take your skills and obvious desire into account, but it seems not. I could pull strings. Get you an active posting. Maybe even NASA. But not without it being obvious that I had done so."

Scott looked down, sick to his stomach. Oh, he wanted it, had done so ever since he'd understood what an astronaut was and that his father was one. But what he wanted, more than the job itself, was to have reached the level of achievement necessary to get there on his own. He couldn't think of anything worse than to be Tracy Junior, who's only here because his father owns the company that makes half the rocket components.

"No. Thank you, sir, but no."

"I thought you'd say that. In that case I have another suggestion for you."

Beside him, Gordon let out a breath in a sigh of relief.

"I don't want to work for you, either." That came out much blunter than he'd intended, and he blundered on desperately. "Not yet. I want my own career first. I need to do something on my own account. Before I have to give it all up and go corporate."

"Scott, shut up!" There was enough desperation in Gordon's voice to make him actually take notice. "There's something you have to see before you make that decision. Please, Father. This is _Scott_ we're talking about. We can trust him, even if he says no. And if it was up to me, I'd be bringing John in on it too."

Jeff nodded slowly. "You're right, Gordon. It's time."

"Time for what?" John demanded.

Gordon reached down and recovered his knee brace from the floor, and proceeded to refasten the straps with a haste that made Scott wince. "You'll see."

"I'll talk to John up here," Jeff said. "Gordon, would you take Scott down?"

Gordon pulled the last strap ferociously tight, picked up his crutches, and eased himself carefully to his feet. "Come with me, Scott. I've wanted to show you this since the moment I saw it."

It had to be a research project. An offer to work for Tracy Aerospace. He already knew he didn't want it, no matter what Gordon might think - but he couldn't stamp down on Gordon's enthusiasm. Couldn't tell his younger brother that, for him, accepting the offer that had pulled Gordon back from the edge of paranoia and depression would be pure hell. No, he'd go see this whatever-it-was, and explain later.

"This way." Gordon was standing beside a blank wall, and as Scott watched he did - something - to a lightswitch, and a whole section of wall swung out towards them.

"Well, this is certainly secret."

"You'll see why." Gordon waved Scott into the wardrobe-sized recess. "There's a rail in front of you. Hold on tight, but don't lean forward. That's important."

"What --"

"It'll all make sense in a minute. Going down..."

The floor dropped away sufficiently fast that, even warned, his hands clenched on the rail. And then the blank wall in front of them vanished as they dropped into a monstrous, brightly lit cavern.

He'd known there were natural caverns under the house. He'd even been shown a couple of them - small, dusty tunnels barely high enough to stand up in. He'd had no idea there was anything like this down here. In fact, his shock was sufficient that he noted the contents without any particular surprise at all. There was a large selection of giant machinery down here, some of which looked like rock-cutting equipment. Two people were working on it, and there were another three at the other side of the cavern, apparently discussing a partly completed structure. That one did catch his attention. That one had wings.

As the lift slowed to a halt at ground level, Scott was out and over to the plane. Jet engines in the tail - several of them. Swing-wing design, but not one he'd seen before. She was gorgeous. New. Cutting-edge.

"And you would be?"

Scott didn't recognise the man who advanced on him, wrench not quite upraised but definitely at the ready, but Gordon was already on it.

"Ted, don't worry. That's Scott. He's with me."

"Scott, is it?" The wrench was lowered to swing casually in one hand. "Aren't you the pilot of the family?"

"Yeah," Scott replied absently, one hand on the front edge of the wing. He'd never seen anything quite like this. All the designs he'd ever flown had had that smooth, organic look, one line flowing into the other except where there was a sharp change of direction. This was chunky and angular, made up of geometric shapes, more like a child's toy than a real plane. And yet - it looked somehow right.

"What's her payload?"

"Payload? Pilot and not much else."

Scott frowned. "Not military, then?"

"Father's not explained it to him yet," Gordon put in, having finally picked his way through the maze of cables on the floor.

"Not told me what? This is what all the secrecy's been about? A one-man...something? What's it for?"

"It's a fast response plane." Gordon waved a crutch at the rear end of the plane. "All engine."

That was indeed a lot of engine. "What's her top speed?"

Ted looked at Gordon, who shrugged. "It's not my theory."

"The designer thinks she'll do twenty, stratospheric."

"Twenty. _Mach_ twenty?" Scott stared at the plane with new respect. "That is fast response."

"Anywhere on the planet within a couple of hours, including time to speed up and slow down."

"So what's she done so far?"

"She's not been off the ground yet." Ted frowned at him. "Isn't that why you're here?"

Scott didn't answer. It seemed obvious that was what he was being offered - and, if there had been nothing else going on, he'd have killed to test-pilot this baby. But it was back to the old problem. He was being given it because of who he was, not what he could do.

"Sit in her, if you want," Ted offered. "I'm no pilot, but I can talk you through the controls."

He was sorely tempted, but..."No. Not right now." Scott took a couple of steps back, desperate to get his head in order. What was a plane like this for? He'd assumed it was incomplete, but now that he looked more closely he could see that it simply wasn't intended to have a traditional undercarriage. No wheels, just a set of struts with landing pads. Vertical takeoff, then. Scott had never done one of those. He wanted to now, badly. He could almost feel the controls underneath his hands. This was the sort of test-pilot job he'd dreamt of. A hypersonic commercial aircraft would be nothing compared to this. But there his boss wouldn't be his father. Scott turned on his heel and walked away, his jaw set.

"Scott! Wait for me!" Gordon had no hope of keeping up with him on crutches, but Scott had no idea how the lift controls worked, so he might as well give in right away rather than have Gordon yell after him all across the cavern. He stopped and waited.

"Don't you want this?"

"I don't want to be given it." Scott gave the silver beauty one last, regretful look. "If that didn't matter to me, I still wouldn't be staying. I'd be taking Dad up on his offer to get me into NASA."

"You're making a mistake. Please, don't say no yet."

"I'll make my own mistakes, thank you."

"Just don't make a decision until you have all the facts?"

"If it turns out this won't involve Father being my boss? Then I'll consider it. Topic closed." Scott put one hand on the front of the lift cage, indicating as clearly as he could that he was ready to leave, and firmly changed the subject. "So, where's that physio I've heard so much about?"

"She's gone home for the weekend. You'll meet her Tuesday. You were right, by the way - she's a sadist. And damn good at her job."

"I can see that." He considered how Gordon was moving, and decided a personal question was probably acceptable, especially if it wasn't phrased as a question. "That leg doesn't look shorter."

"The shoe's built right up." Gordon looked down, and shifted his weight to stand straighter. "It's just under an inch shorter. If I change my mind later, they can re-break it and put me back in the frame - but I don't think I will. I still need at least one more op on my foot. I want to be done with actual treatment as soon as possible."

Scott raised his eyebrows curiously. "Are you planning on going somewhere?"

"Just come talk to Father."

* * *

Jeff wasn't behind his desk when they got back into the living area, but they found him in his office, John sitting alongside him. 

"What do you think of my plane?" Jeff asked as Scott sat down.

"Impressive."

"She needs a test pilot."

Scott forced himself to breathe calmly and think through his response. "I'm not a test pilot yet."

"I still can't think of anyone else I'd rather have. She was designed with you in mind."

Scott frowned. "But I'd planned to spend another year or so in the Air Force, then NASA..." His voice trailed off as the full implications of what he was thinking sank in. "Please tell me you haven't known all along that my career was going nowhere. Or even made sure it didn't."

"No. No, Scott, you know I wouldn't." Scott was staring at the floor as Jeff put a hand on his shoulder. "I won't deny I knew something was going on, or that I've stayed out of it when I could have used my influence to put pressure on the selection boards. But, like I said, it would have been obvious. I figured you didn't want that, and if you did, you'd ask."

"I didn't want that." Scott swallowed. "I still don't. You've got a whole aerospace company full of experienced test pilots, and you want to give the fastest thing on wings to me? I'd never be able to show my face at an airfield again. I'd sure as hell never get any respect if you brought me in at management level later. You'd best not tell me any more, because that whole conflict of interest thing's going to be even worse if I get the job with Terranean. I'll see you at dinner."

* * *

He was still shaking, leaning on the balcony of his room, when he became aware of a presence either side of him, and a fantastic smell. 

The hand holding the mug in front of him was definitely John's, from the blond hairs and the Harvard ring. The voice, though, was Gordon's.

"I figured this might work for you too."

Scott had two mouthfuls inside him before he started thinking clearly. "How'd you two get in here?"

"You weren't answering. We borrowed the master key." Gordon didn't apologise, though.

"Scott, please don't turn this down before you've thought it through." That was John. "This isn't going to be NASA. It'll still be a sight more interesting than some civilian airliner."

"Some civilian airliner designed by a company which Father doesn't own." Scott took another swig of the coffee, still staring out to sea.

"You say that like it makes a difference."

"It does." Scott took a ragged breath. "I guess I have to explain this once. I'm pretty darn sure I won't be able to say it to Father. So you'd both best listen hard."

"Scott..." That was Gordon, confused but still supportive. Good old Gordon.

"Just listen." He took a final mouthful, got his head in order, and turned to address two worried faces.

"Gordon once asked me whether I'd ever been given a job because of Father. I don't think I have. But every single person I've ever worked with has heard my name and assumed that's why I'm there. Every one. And now I've been told I can't get the positions I want precisely because I'm Dad's son and heir. So Father sets me up as the test pilot of his fancy new plane. It doesn't matter one bit whether I'm the best man for the job. Nobody will ever believe I didn't get it because of who I am. A totally separate civilian company would be different. I should have done it years ago. I'm sick and tired of being introduced as Scott, Jeff Tracy's oldest son. Just once, I'd like to do something that he can't possibly have had an influence on. Where I'd just be me, and he'd be Scott Tracy's father. I know I have to give it all up and go into management eventually, unless one of you would like to volunteer to take my place, but I'm not ready yet. Father wants to get me into the company through the back door right now. By giving me a plane I can't refuse."

"Hold that thought, Scott." There was a good deal of horrified sympathy in John's voice. "There'll be no publicity involved in this at all. I'm probably not supposed to tell you this, but what the hell. He's setting up a secret organisation. First response disaster rescue."

"A secret rescue organisation?"

"That's right." Gordon shifted uncomfortably, taking the weight off his right leg. "Why do you think Father put so much effort into keeping us in the dark? The number of people who know about it is in single figures. That plane down there is going to be the fastest thing in the sky. Imagine if someone racked a few missiles under its wings. Nobody's going to know who we are, where we're based, any details of the craft."

"Secret." Scott grimaced. "It's beyond belief. Father's lost his mind! The very first time his secret super-plane shows up somewhere, all anyone will have to do is backtrack the satellite surveillance records. 'Oh look! It came from Tracy Island. Gee, I wonder who's behind that.' John, please tell me you're not falling for this."

John cleared his throat. "Uh...Scott, he's thought it through better than that. That plane won't show up on surveillance. And there's more. He's got a space station. It needs someone to man it. A one man crew wouldn't overtax a decent filtration system."

"He offered you the station?" Scott heard the tension in Gordon's voice. John obviously didn't.

"Yes. He needs an astronaut and --"

The colour left Gordon's face as though it had been painted out, and he leant back against the wall before sliding down it to sit on the deck. Scott and John exchanged horrified glances, as both dropped to their knees alongside him.

"What did I say?" John gasped.

"Don't know. Gordon, talk to us! What's wrong?"

"Nothing." There was utter defeat in his voice, and Scott frowned again at John over his head. And then realisation seeped in. Gordon wanting to be free, not of medical problems, but of medical treatment.

"Gordon, did Father offer you the station?"

"Oh, shit," muttered John.

"Yeah, he did." All the bitter depression was back in Gordon's voice. "Course, that was before he realised he could have a real trained astronaut up there. Someone who's good at languages, not someone who's frantically cramming. I shouldn't be surprised. I'd have been rubbish at it anyway."

"Gordon - I didn't know!" John put a hand on his brother's arm, but Gordon shook it off.

"Don't worry. I'll get over myself."

"Like hell you will. I'm not taking a job he already offered to you. Come, Gordon. We'll go and tell him --"

John stopped mid-phrase, started to his feet and walked hastily to the other end of the balcony, groping in his pocket and gasping unsteadily. He stood there for maybe five seconds, shoulders visibly shaking, before erupting with one of the most explosive sneezes Scott had ever heard. A moment's respite, a mutter of "oh, crap," and he exploded again. And again. Five times in all, before his breathing settled and he turned back to them, face flushed in embarrassment, eyes watering, and his nose buried in his handkerchief.

"Sorry, Gordo. Maybe not just yet."

"You're allergic to something here?" Scott frowned. "It's a good onshore wind."

"Probably the change in air." John gasped again, pinching the bridge of his nose hard. "Damn drugs don't seem to be working."

"That pill you took this morning?"

"Yeah. Slow-release desensitisation...aah..." He turned away and sneezed three more times for good measure, before blowing his nose with an uncomfortable gentleness that had Scott wincing in sympathy. "Man, this sucks."

"You're sensitive to a change in air now?" Gordon queried.

John snorted. "Six weeks sneezing yourself silly every time a new flower feels like blooming will make you sensitive to just about anything. Right now, I feel like there's a couple of spiders running round my sinuses. What I can't figure out is why the pill isn't working."

Realisation hit. "Because it's busy making sure one of Father's palm trees will never sneeze again?"

John's palm hit his forehead. "Oh. Now I feel real stupid. And I have no idea when I can take another one. Today won't be much fun if I have to wait until tomorrow morning."

"I know someone who can tell you." Gordon pushed himself to his feet, still grim-faced. "Let's go see Brains. You too, Scott. It's about time you two met."

* * *

'Brains' turned out to be one of the people Scott had seen from a distance in the cavern. Short, slight, not much older than Gordon, wearing spectacles strong enough to distort his eyes when you looked at him, and possessed of one of the worst stutters Scott had ever heard. And painfully aware of it. 

"Should I go?" he muttered to Gordon, as the young doctor struggled to ask a sneezing, snuffling John precisely what drugs he'd been taking when.

Gordon shook his head. "No point making him go through this twice. He's not so bad with people he's dealt with before. You standing here probably qualifies."

Even so, Scott felt decidedly uncomfortable. He turned his back, and scanned the contents of the walls. There might have been noticeboards under there somewhere, but he really couldn't tell. Blueprints overlaid printed specifications overlaid illegible scrawled notes on hand-drawn diagrams. All the same writing. Scott spotted the landing struts for the plane Gordon had shown him downstairs, meticulously hand-drawn and with a set of calculations alongside that his Oxford physics course gave just enough insight into that it confirmed the Mach Twenty top speed Ted had mentioned. Man, that was fast. From the looks of those figures, it would be manoeuvrable, too. No civilian airliner, that was for sure.

Another sheet he recognised as orbital mechanics. And something much less familiar, but apparently calculations for depths and water pressures on various shapes of hull.

"I thought you said this guy was a doctor? Nothing here looks like he's a doctor of medicine."

"Medicine and about four other things." Gordon indicated the total chaos around them. "Man's a certified genius. He designed One from scratch. And Three, and Four. And the stealth system."

"Three and Four? One? What's Two?"

"One's the plane you saw. Three's the supply ship for Five. Four's the most advanced one-man sub on the planet. Two's a heavy transport, still in the design stage." Gordon's mouth twitched at Scott's growing confusion, but he didn't smile. "Five's the space station I'd thought I was going to man. Brains didn't design that - it's a recycled comms satellite. Expanded a bit - well, quite a lot, actually - to take crew."

"We'll sort this, Gordo. Maybe Father wants two people up there? Or a rotation?"

"Doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out who'll be senior, though, does it?" He shrugged. "I was fooling myself. I'm not fit enough to do the work to set it up in any case. Just give me a couple of days, and I'll be able to be happy for John."

"Presuming anyone can stop him doing that." Scott jerked his head towards the other side of the room. John was barely managing monosyllables between sneezes, and every one sounded more tired than the one before. He obviously needed help. Even so, Brains crossing to a locked drug cabinet on the wall, extracting a phial and a syringe, and going back to John's side with the clear intention of injecting - something - into him was more than Scott could take in silence.

"Gordo - are you sure about this man? Being brilliant doesn't make him a medical doctor."

"He's a medical doctor." Gordon in coolly reassuring mode wasn't something Scott had heard too often, but actually his little brother wasn't at all bad at it. "I just wish he was a surgeon. Don't worry. You think I'd let someone incompetent drug John? You think I'd let him drug me?"

"If you're sure." Scott clenched his fists and watched as Brains, most competently he had to admit, swabbed John's forearm and injected whatever-it-was into him.

It worked. John stopped practically mid-sneeze, barely twenty seconds later.

"Thanks," he said with a strong helping of disbelief, once he'd blown his nose and got his breath back. "That's good stuff."

"It is very strong." Brains told him, the stutter all but gone. "You should not drive, or operate heavy machinery."

John laughed shakily. "Ah - one of those drugs. I knew it was too good to be true. Guess I can live with it for now." _But not permanently_, was the strong implication. For now, though, John just looked relieved to have stopped sneezing. "Gordon, give me a couple of hours? I am going back to Father, but I need my brain to start working again first."

Gordon nodded, his expression freezing again, and this time John did notice. "Belay that. We're going right now. Scott - I could use your support. I'm not thinking so quick at the moment."

"I don't know anything about this station you're talking about."

"You know it's wrong to take away a job someone thought they'd earned."

Scott flinched. "Yeah. I know that."

* * *

Jeff was still in his office, behind a desk almost invisible under a stack of giant technical drawings, as they went in. 

"Is there a problem? John, you don't look so good."

"I'm better than I was, now Brains has drugged me." John still sat down without waiting to be asked, though, and Jeff's eyes widened in alarm.

"So what's wrong?"

"You're giving me Gordon's job." John had always been blunt, but Scott still winced at the uncompromising statement. "That's not right."

"Gordon's job?" Jeff frowned, and at the incomprehension in his tone, Gordon himself cut in.

"Yes, Father. My job. The space station, remember? Low gravity? The sort of place a cripple could get around? I don't mind you deciding John's a better candidate than me. But I wish you'd told me first."

"Oh, my." Jeff's eyes went wide. "Gordon, I'm so sorry. I had no idea you hadn't... it's a long while since I thought of you as a candidate for the space station. I want your skills as an aquanaut."

Gordon swallowed. "You want me to train someone? I guess I can do that."

"No. _No_." Jeff sat forward, the intensity in his gaze apparently all that was holding Gordon in the room. "Son, I confess, when Scott first persuaded me to bring you into my confidence, I did see you as a cripple. It didn't look like you'd be out of the chair any time soon, if ever. But you've proved everyone wrong. You're walking, or as near as makes no difference. You're swimming, and I've seen the setting you have that endless current on. Nobody else here can get near it, and some of them swim darn fast. Brains has told me just how many of Four's facilities are things you came up with. She's your baby, Gordon. If you need a co-pilot, co-aquanaut, whatever you call them, to help you physically, then I'll find you one. But I've come to realise that cross-training a pilot just isn't going to work. I need a specialist at the controls, and that would be you."

Gordon just sat there with his mouth open.

"Does that help?"

Gordon's "yes" was uninflected, and Scott was unsurprised by his hasty exit.

John, though, was frowning. "Which is Four?"

Jeff's glance at his eldest son said it all, really.

"No, I haven't changed my mind. I'll take myself away. See you at dinner."

* * *

What he wanted was a computer and an Internet connection secure to military standards. Scott wasn't at all sure whether the one in his room, and the connection from the island, would qualify, but he had his suspicions. They were proved right. His Air Force ID and password got him straight in to a section not available to members of the public. Everything he did in here would be monitored. He went straight to the section detailing every job available in the Air Force, from test pilot to bottle-washer. That last, he'd never understood - he was reasonably sure not even Air Force bottle-washers had a security clearance high enough to view the information. Scott hesitated over the link to the test pilot details, then shook his head. There was no point. Not until the people selecting the candidates had changed. And if someone who cared enough to check his ID against his name was watching - well, the last thing Scott wanted was to show them how much that rejection still hurt. 

_Let them mull this one over_. The link to the display team information was just below. Nominations for next year's team were due...soon. He had the requirements - barely. His flying hours as an instructor were higher than they'd have been on anything other than a front-line posting - then again, they weren't exactly high-stress. Oh, they said instructing was a prestigious assignment, that only the best were asked to do it, and it was probably true. But at the same time, if you were asked what you'd been doing for the last six months, "instructing" was definitely a second class answer compared to, say, flying reconnaissance over Bereznik. It just had that air of sitting nice and safe at home.

If he was going to go in for this, he was going to have to _move_. Final date for nominations was six days from now. He knew so little about it that right now applying would be a joke. Heck, he didn't even know where they were based. He had a vague memory that there were six pilots, maybe a couple of alternates, and that they flew trainers - well, that was something, at least. He had _lots_ of time in trainers. This wasn't research to be done on the secured site, though, it could only demonstrate his ignorance. Scott logged out, turned the computer off and back on again for good measure - he wasn't sure whether it would make a difference to someone seeing where he'd gone to next, but he was pretty sure it couldn't do any harm - and set up a generic search on aerial display teams in general, and the US Air Force's variant in particular.

There was plenty of information out there. And some very seriously impressive photos. Scott had always dismissed the thought of aerial display. Now, though, he was wondering whether he'd ever actually considered it, or whether it had just been something his father hadn't done, and therefore not worth doing. He'd never so much as watched a film, as far as he could remember. Recruitment videos were for people who didn't have flying in their blood.

Now, watching grainy, wobbly, amateur footage, Scott found himself enthused by something in a way he hadn't been for a very long time. The British job wasn't him, he could see that now - good for making the point that he was his own man, but really, he wasn't a large plane pilot and they'd know that from one flick through his resume. The only way he could get that job was if somebody decided the Tracy family connection was worth it, and that was what he was trying to get away from in the first place. This sort of close-quarter aerobatics, now that he looked at it seriously rather than with the jaundiced eye of someone who considered it all rather pointless, he genuinely wanted to do. And nobody could say this was because of his father. Nobody would even believe he'd applied for it, given his father. Or, indeed, his own attitude. Scott only hoped that he'd never been too publicly vocal with what he now realised had been entirely unjustified snobbery. He didn't think he had been. When your father walks on the moon before your fifth birthday, you grow up knowing that anything you're overheard saying could be printed for all to see in the next day's paper.

His father wasn't missing out on anything, either. Jeff could use one of his experienced test pilots for that high speed beauty in the caverns - that, he regretted, but not enough to accept the misguided favouritism his father was offering. No, if he could get this, he'd have three years, and that might just be long enough for memories to fade, for the test pilots to reconsider, for NASA to take him seriously.

Gordon and John could stay here and work for Father - rescuing people had to be a good thing, and maybe he'd get involved eventually, on his own terms. Not yet, though. Scott Tracy was off to apply to the Thunderbirds.

* * *

Author's note: some serious derailing of this chapter went on when I discovered what the USAF's display team is called :)

As always, all comments are very welcome.


	3. Chapter 3

As always, the Thunderbirds characters and universe don't belong to me.

Rated for a bit of harsh language.

Thanks to Sam W for betaing for me, and to the folks at TIWF for all their encouragement.

* * *

By the time he got back to his quarters at Boyd Air Force Base, Scott was feeling considerably more like himself. Back in control, and knowing what he had to do. The fact that he had little time didn't worry him. He was, after all, a fighter pilot. Quick decisions weren't an issue for him. He took just enough time to drop his coat and case in the bedroom, and sat down at the computer. 

The internet was a great resource. A little more digging than he'd had time for back on the island produced hour after hour of unofficial videos of Thunderbirds air displays. Much closer formation flying than he was used to, but Scott knew he was an excellent precision pilot. He'd be good at this. The high-speed near-misses were very impressive, but he wasn't sure he saw a lot of use for them other than making the crowds gasp. Precision, though, was always useful. Test pilots needed precision.

So did rescue team pilots.

Scott sighed, stopped the playback, and wandered over to the kitchen. What would Mach Twenty feel like? Now he wished he'd taken the chance to sit in the cockpit, had a good look at the controls, asked questions about the swing-wing design and the choice of wheel-less undercarriage. What would she be like to fly, that silver arrow?

What would it be like to spend two days a month flying and the rest of it in boardroom meetings, listening and learning at his father's side, getting to know the captains of industry? For every conversation to be with someone for whom a plane was no more than an alternative office where they could work and travel simultaneously? Even the thought of it was an icy hand round his heart. He couldn't face it. Not yet. Not for his father, not for his family. Not until his reflexes slowed and the high-speed technical flying he craved became a physical impossibility. He was doing the right thing.

It still took him several minutes to settle back to full concentration. What he wanted to know, what he wasn't seeing in these clips, was how they formed up. And, of course, that was done out of site of spectators and cameras. Scott went back to the search engine. Somewhere out there, surely, there had to be some cockpit camera footage. If not from the Thunderbirds, then from some other display team.

He was watching a most interesting clip from the Israeli team, footage of a new recruit learning the ropes, and wishing that he understood what he presumed was Hebrew commentary, when there was a tap at the door. He ignored it.

The second knock couldn't be described as a tap. Scott sighed - clearly whoever it was couldn't take a hint - and crossed to the door, ready with a couple of prime sarcastic lines he'd borrowed from Alan. He didn't use either of them.

"Virgil, what the hell are you doing here? This is not a good time."

Virgil walked past him and stopped, staring at the paused image on the computer screen. "I need a half hour of your time. After that you can throw me out."

"Half an hour, I can manage." Scott blanked the screen, sat down on the swivel chair, and spun round to face the sofa, waving Virgil to it. "So, did Father put you up to this?"

"No, Gordon. And he did the right thing. You're making a huge mistake."

"What, applying to Air Terrainean? I agree. I've changed my mind. Civilian airliners aren't for me."

Virgil relaxed somewhat. "That's great! But then why did you come away from the island early?"

"I'm applying to the Thunderbirds display team."

"Oh, no." The tension was back. "Then I did have to come. Scott, I want you to just listen, because I hate having to say this to you. You've missed the point. None of this is about you."

"It's my career. It's about me."

"Father's offered you the best next step your career could possibly have right now. And don't tell me you don't want it, because I know you better than that. You'd be damn good at it, and you'd enjoy it. So what's your problem?"

"What comes with it. Working for Father. And it wouldn't just be piloting, Virg. You know that."

"I know what you think it would be. You've had people pointing you out as Jeff Tracy's heir since you were crawling. And you've always thought you couldn't walk away from that. But think about it…I walked away from a music scholarship everyone expected me to take because it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. The sky didn't fall, the world didn't end. I'm still part of the family and I still play piano."

"There were other people to take that scholarship. If I don't get involved with the corporate side of things, who's going to do it? You?"

Virgil shrugged. "Maybe, if it was only part time. John? Alan? One of Father's current vice-presidents? Somebody who actually wants to? Why does that matter, right now? There are plenty of corporate executives out there. It's time you sat down and figured out what you want to do, Scott."

Scott stared, speechless.

"I'm done. I guess I didn't need half an hour."

Finally, Scott's voice worked. "I figured out what I wanted to do when I was eight years old. All I've ever wanted since then was to be an astronaut. It's not going to happen, Virg, and...nothing else is the same." There. It was said.

Virgil just looked at him, and now the look wasn't exasperation any more, but raw sympathy and understanding.

"I'm a damn good pilot, Virg. I'd have been a damn good astronaut. And I'm sick to death of nobody noticing or caring because they're so busy digesting 'Tracy'."

Virgil frowned. "Of course they notice. I mean, they put you on the front line before. You were shot down, for heaven's sake. They decorated you, for saving your wingman."

"I know. But they didn't like it."

Virgil just looked at him, and Scott sat forward, trying to explain something which was almost beyond words.

"I'm a by-the-book guy. I follow orders. I keep my nose clean. I don't embarrass the family name, or the Air Force."

Virgil snorted, making a face. "Staying with Fred instead of saving your own ass wasn't exactly disobeying orders."

"No, but it didn't make 'em happy. I couldn't leave my wingman, Virg. Not when he couldn't manoeuvre and he was just sitting there waiting for them to pick him off. I took the second missile for him. And I've been paying for it ever since, because that's when they realized that I'd always make sure I was the one in the way of danger. And now they won't assign me anywhere remotely near it. I can't be trusted to keep Jeff Tracy's son safe."

No horrified sympathy. No outrage. Virgil just said, "That sucks," got up, and headed for the kitchen.

It took several seconds for Scott to realise what his brother was doing, and then he was forced to laugh. "Am I really that predictable?"

"Coffee when you're upset? Only for about the last fifteen years."

"So, did you have a good flight down?" It was banal, totally unrelated to anything that mattered - but he needed a change of subject. _Any_ change of subject.

"Fine. Weather's all over the place, though - it's warmer in Denver than it is here, and the wind patterns!"

"Oh? I had a good flight back, and it's calm enough here."

"It is now. Scott, come here a minute."

There was sudden concern in his brother's tone, and Scott stood up and joined him at the kitchen window, looking out towards the ocean.

"What does that cloud look like to you?"

Scott considered it, absorbing the deep, murky yellow-green. "It can't be," he said.

"That's a tornado cloud, or I didn't grow up in Kansas."

"We don't get tornadoes here, Virg!"

Not here, not in San Diego, close to the middle of the city, and coming in from over the ocean. But he'd seen tornados before, growing up in Kansas, and they'd all looked very much like that. Way too dark for an ordinary storm, and with a sight-defying blurriness out towards the horizon. As the base of the cloud dropped visibly, narrowing and forming an evil black funnel-shape, there was no longer any question. Scott went to the phone.

"Tower? Captain Tracy here. You've got a tornado coming in fast from the west."

There was casual dismissal on the other end of the line.

"Yeah, I know this is San Diego. I grew up in Kansas. If I'm wrong, you can have a good laugh at my expense later. For now, get anyone on the runway in the air fast, and have everyone else head north or south. My authority. Do it!"

He put the phone down as the line went dead, hoping that this indicated they were getting on with it rather than considering it a hoax. Certainly the planes he could see were all starting to taxi towards the takeoff end of the runway, rather faster than was usual. They could get lucky here. It looked as if everything standing out had a pilot in it, ready to fly.

And then he froze. He'd remembered what was over just beyond the hangars. Just as the tip of the funnel reached the land, and the blurriness spread exponentially as the whirling air found dust and debris to pick up. Knowing it was much too late to make any difference, he grabbed for the receiver again and dialed a 9 followed by a 1, and then swore furiously as the lights went out and the phone died.

Virgil grabbed him by the shoulder as he tried uselessly to reset the phone. "It's gonna hit us full on! Get in the corridor, Scott, now!"

Scott glanced back towards the window, and the image burned itself on his memory. Whirling blackness, filled with dirt, debris, litter, roof tiles, larger shapes moving too fast for him to identify, and a noise like a roaring freight train heading right for him. He just stood and stared - and was slammed to the wall opposite his own front door as Virgil removed him bodily from his own apartment and slammed the door behind them.

There was a moment of eerie silence. And then the whole building shuddered, and there was a staggeringly loud smash of breaking glass. Two breathless seconds later, the same sound from the other side of the building, and then quiet. Just briefly, before doors started opening and people looked to him for instruction.

"Bomb, sir?"

"Earthquake?" That from a new transfer.

"No phone signal," Virgil put in quietly. "Power must be out, to the masts."

"Damn. No surprise, though. It was a tornado," Scott told them, glancing around to see who he had here. "Phillips, Watson, get over to the base, report to whoever's senior over there. James, McWilliams, check nobody's hurt in here. Adams, you're with me. Get your medical kit. You too, Virg. It went right through the base nursery."

It would have been a mile or more round the perimeter of the airfield. They didn't need to go round. They didn't even need to open the doors of the accommodation block. The glass from them was now scattered in a million tiny fragments on the sidewalk. Out on the road in front was a complete carpet of glass sparkling in the sun. The tornado blackness was gone as if it had never been there.

Virgil hesitated. "Any chance that's safety glass?"

"Military accommodation this close to an airbase? It's a certainty." Scott crunched his way across the road, walked right through a giant rent in the airfield's security fence, and set off at a not-quite-sprint straight back along the path of destruction.

Four hundred yards took him across the runway to the base's largest hangar, now with a giant rent in its roof. Scott ignored the shocked queries from the technicians just starting to cluster in front of it, and headed towards the path round the side. He could hear the wailing of sirens and see the base's emergency vehicles weaving their way between debris down the runway towards them. These people didn't need his help. They needed him to be out of the way. There were fuel tanks in there, lines, cleaning chemicals, and he could see puddles of who-knew-what on the hangar floor, quite possibly substances which would require special handling. Definitely a job for the experts.

The perimeter fence here was twisted and flattened, but not torn. Scott picked his way through ten feet of chainlink, over the razor wire strands which had topped it, and stood, trembling with the effort, in the nursery playground. Virgil had just reached the fence. Mark Adams, encumbered by his medical kit, was just coming round the side of the hangar. Scott steeled himself and headed for the door.

There was a degree of screaming coming from inside - which, he supposed, had to be a good thing. At least the roof hadn't come down and crushed them all. And the walls, on this side at least, appeared intact. But it also meant that nobody inside paid the slightest attention to his shouts.

Virgil arrived, puffing somewhat, and simply gasped, "Stand back." Scott did as he was told. Eight years earlier, a number of colleges would have been very happy to see Virgil on their football team. Virgil had made his feelings on the matter very plain by opting for an engineering college that didn't even have a football program. He still had the build, though, and hit the door with a shoulder charge that any NFL running back would have been proud of. It splintered satisfyingly around the catch.

It was, Scott realised, fortunate that the door hadn't been fully locked. Even Virgil couldn't have smashed his way through top and bottom deadbolts in a hurry. But at two in the afternoon, the only lock had been a single catch to prevent unaccompanied children from wandering out, or uninvited visitors wandering in.

"Hello!" he called, stepping inside around broken polystyrene ceiling tiles. "Anyone hurt in here?"

The wailing continued, but he thought he heard an adult's voice through it. Down the corridor and to the left. He picked his way to the door, and opened it to find a scene of devastation.

The room was open to the sky. The remnants of a suspended ceiling littered the floor, its metal support beams now held up across child-sized furniture. Cables trailed from one side of the room to the other, some resting on the toys. The glass in the window had shattered here, too - and this had clearly not been safety glass, from the lethal daggers still clinging to the frames in places. Over that side of the room, a young woman worked frantically over another, thankfully adult-sized, figure, both of them covered in blood. The screaming was coming from in here, low down.

Scott waved Virgil past him towards the casualty and crouched down to investigate. Rows of saucer-sized eyes met his from under the tables, and the screaming was replaced with pathetic whimpering. Well, that was an improvement, at least. But this was an awful situation for them to be in. The power was out at the moment - but if it came back on, and one of those kids did something stupid, they'd be fried. Virgil had at least as much first aid training as he did, and Mark Adams was a qualified emergency room doctor trying to make a career jump to flight surgeon, and would be here any second. They could handle the casualty. He had to get the kids out.

"Hey there," he ventured to the nearest pair of eyes.

The blonde-curled child whimpered and tried to burrow into the wall. Not a good start.

"My name's Scott. What's yours?"

No response, but the boy behind her said something like "Siddy."

"Siddy? That's a nice name. Come on out, Siddy."

No response from her, but there were a few snuffles of laughter from further in. Well, Scott could get names wrong with the best of them.

"Okay, Siddy, you stay there for a bit. How about you?" He reached under, towards the next child, who he rather thought he'd seen before. "Are you Middy?"

Almost a giggle, as the dark-skinned boy in question pushed past the other, took his hand rather nervously, and stood up, staring wide-eyed at the debris. "I'm Charlie. And my dad's a pilot."

"I thought I recognised you. Your dad's Mason, right? I'm a pilot too. You go - carefully- and stand right by the door, Charlie." He reached back under the table. "Is there a Tiddy in here?"

'Tiddy' turned out to be Emma, brown plaits with hairs sticking out in every possible direction, and thumb firmly in mouth.

"Is your dad a pilot too?" Scott asked her, lifting her over towards Charlie at the door.

She shook her head and muttered something round the thumb which might have been 'mommy'.

"That's nice," Scott smiled, and crouched back down. "Middy?"

Thirteen children stood by the door in short order, and Scott eventually had to give up on being gentle and go in after the recalcitrant one. She shrieked and yelled, but Scott hadn't had four younger brothers without learning a trick or two about catching small children who didn't want to be caught.

"There now, Siddy," he told her as he extracted both of them, "that wasn't so bad, was it? Now we're all going outside where it's safer."

"Not safer," Charlie told him, the whites of his eyes showing all around in genuine fear. "Hurricane out there!"

"Nado," said another little boy firmly. "Dangerous."

"No tornadoes here," his friend stated.

"It was a tornado, and it's gone now, " Scott reassured them. "We all need to go...to go make sure the ambulance for your teacher knows where to park." He'd vaguely registered Virgil on his cellphone calling for one, the moment Mark arrived and he had a spare hand. Thank heavens for redundant systems and multiple phone masts.

"Missa wanted to shut the blinds so the glass wouldn't hit us," Emma told him, "but it hit her instead."

"That was very brave of her," Scott said, resisting the urge to comment just how stupid it had been.

"Is she hurt?" someone asked.

"Want Missa," the child in his arms whimpered.

"Dr Adams is looking after her," Scott assured them, trying to wipe the image of all the blood from his mind. Thankfully, from child's eye level, it was much less visible. "And my brother, and your other teacher. Now, let's go outside out of their way. Missa will feel much better if she knows you're all safe."

He wasn't sure what he'd have done if they'd refused to cooperate. These, though, were military brats. If their families were anything like his, they were used to the concept of people being given orders. Charlie opened the door and reached for the hand of the child alongside him without a murmur, and the rest of them followed suit and filed away in short order, even if one of them was still scowling and muttering about his daddy saying they didn't get tornadoes here. Scott breathed a sigh of relief as he followed the last of them out of the front door.

He badly wanted to start phoning people. If he'd had any sense, he'd have gone to the bedroom and rescued his cellphone from his coat pocket the moment he'd seen the cloud. Or pocketed Virgil's on his way out of the classroom. It was too late now - he couldn't leave fourteen under-fives outside without an adult, not even if they were all shell-shocked and whimpering, curled in little heaps as far from the building as they could get. Scott was fifteen years away from Alan being this small and unhappy, but he knew this wasn't right. He sat down alongside the most obviously weeping child.

"Now, were you Middy or Biddy?"

"I'm Katie, and I want my mom!"

"Where's your mom now?"

"In a plane!" the child wailed, and almost threw herself into his lap.

"And my dad," another one said.

Siddy was silent, but her eyes were huge as she nodded, bottom lip trembling.

"Then they're fine. They're all fine." Scott put a long arm out round as many children as he could reach. "Look over there. Do you see that big tall building with all the windows at the top?"

Charlie gave him the pitying look which very small children reserve for ignorant adults. "That's called the control tower. It's where they tell the pilots when to land and take off."

Scott smothered a smile. "I'm sure you're right. But - look at the windows. Are they broken?"

Fourteen heads swivelled upwards, as fourteen pairs of eyes squinted against the brightness. "No," thirteen voices chorused.

"See, tornados are very powerful. But they're not very big, at least this one wasn't. It broke your nursery, and the hangar over there, and the fence, and the windows of my apartment block, but that's about all. The tower told all the planes to stay away where it was safe. Now there are bits of hangar roof all over the runway, and I expect your moms and dads will have to fly to another airfield to land, but then they'll be back." He stopped as an ambulance, siren wailing, pulled up on the road outside. "Give me some space, kids. I have to let them in."

Even Siddy let go of him as he stood up and hurried to open the gate into the nursery grounds. The ambulance pulled in, and the driver jumped out.

"Did you make the call, sir?"

"My brother. Through that door, down the corridor, second on the left."

"Do you work here? Are you in charge of these kids?"

"No."

He reached back inside the vehicle and toggled the radio. "Dispatch, code twelve, about a dozen preschoolers." Heading for the door with his partner, he offered, "Stay with them for now," over his shoulder, before the pair of them vanished inside.

"Aren't you supposed to be with us?" asked a child whose name he had already forgotten.

"Well, I'm a pilot, and your parents probably want you looked after by proper teachers. I guess that man will have them send someone."

Charlie's face fell. "You could take us to see your plane. We'd be real good!"

"I'm sure you would, kid. But now's not a real good time, with all the mess from the tornado and everything." Scott looked around him at disappointed little faces. "How's this? You've all been so good, I'll see if I can arrange for you to come see the planes when everything's fixed.

They were still cheering when Virgil emerged from the door, followed by a young woman who the children greeted ecstatically as 'Helen'. Both were bloodstained and visibly shaken, but Virgil gave Scott a quick thumbs-up in response to his questioning look.

Mark Adams followed shortly afterwards, looking relieved. He crossed to Scott.

"Captain, with your permission I'll report to base, in case I'm needed somewhere else."

Scott nodded and waved him off, and he disappeared round the corner back towards the hole in the fence.

Helen had a cellphone and a list of contact numbers for the children's parents. By the time the paramedics emerged with Missa on the gurney, five adults had already arrived to collect their children. Two were pilots known to Scott, including Charlie's father, a cheerful man who had to flirt even closer than Scott did with the maximum height restriction on fighter pilots.

"Captain Tracy! Uh - sir, what are you doing babysitting?"

"I saw the tornado touch down, and remembered you telling me what the building behind the hangar was."

"And you came over here to help? Thank you, sir. Thank you."

"And he said he'd take us all to see his plane!"

Scott exchanged amused glances with the other man, not ready to even start contemplating how he was going to manage it. He would, though. He didn't break promises.

Ten minutes later, 'Siddy' turned out to be Sadie, and was handed over to a mother tearful in her gratitude. And that left only three children still unspoken for by the time the ambulance finally left and a large jolly lady showed up from the ambulance station. She was armed with juice and toys for the children, and a minibus to take them somewhere safe until those parents who hadn't been reached could get back to collect them.

Helen saw the last of the children strapped into the minibus before coming back to where Scott and Virgil stood watching.

"I haven't had a chance to thank you. I don't even know your names, or where you came from."

"Scott Tracy," Scott told her. "I'm an instructor at the base here. This is my brother Virgil, he's from out of town. And there's no need for thanks. We were in the right place at the right time."

"Thank you," she said simply, stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek, and hurried back to the waiting minibus. Three little hands waved goodbye through the rear window, and it pulled away.

Virgil smiled ruefully. "And, yet again, the blue eyes have it. Come on, Scott. I could murder that coffee." He walked briskly round the building, while Scott decided he ought to shut the gate and headed briefly the other way. "Uh...Scott?"

Scott changed direction, and found himself faced by an armed Air Force guard, rifle in his hands, on the far side of the flattened fence. "Hi there, Tom."

"Captain Tracy," the man responded. "Sir, I'm sorry, Lieutenant Adams told me you went through this way, but I can't let you back in. Not with a civilian. Sorry, sir."

Scott sighed. "I understand. Come on, Virgil. The walk will do you good."

It would do him good, too. He badly needed to clear his head and think through what had just happened. And, four hundred yards round the perimeter, he decided discussing it with someone else wasn't such a bad idea either.

"I made a right mess of that."

Virgil grunted enquiringly.

"We were lucky nobody died in there. If the power had come back on, there would have been live cables everywhere. You'd have been fried, working on top of them like that. I should have had that woman - Helen - come deal with the kids the moment Mark arrived. I could have called the ambulance and made sure the power was off at the mains."

"I'll remember that the next time we're in a nursery that's been hit by a tornado."

"Come on, Virg. You know what I mean."

His brother stopped walking. "I know exactly what you mean. A situation like that needs somebody standing back and looking at the bigger picture."

"Exactly."

"Someone who's on the scene fast, making sure the right thing gets done, not just the first, most obvious one."

"Yes."

"Someone whose instinct is to analyze what he could have done better, even when what he did worked out just fine."

Scott looked sideways, but his brother's face was unreadable. He was quite sure that this whole line of discussion was associated with his father's proposed rescue team, but just how much Virgil knew was unclear to him. And Virgil's conflict of interest was, if anything, even more pronounced than his own. Scott didn't like to consider that Virgil might have been trusted when he hadn't been.

"Of course, they don't have tornadoes in San Diego," Virgil commented a little further down the road.

"They don't. Always a first time for everything, though." Scott indicated the now perfect blue sky. "I don't think those women had ever seen one. Or thought about what it might do."

"And the builders of that nursery should be shot. Safety glass in the accommodation blocks, but not in a building full of preschoolers? That's criminal."

"At the very least, it's negligent. I'll certainly be commenting. I mean, that tornado was what? A one?"

"Just about. It tore some sheets off the hangar roof next door, and that was about it. The nursery was trashed. Bad building, and bad materials." Virgil gestured around him. Undamaged perimeter fence on one side of the road, untouched windows on the other. "It was real local. These folks probably don't know anything happened."

"Nothing should have happened. Tornadoes in San Diego? In spring?"

"Climate change. Too much CO2. It's happening all over."

This time Scott was the one to stop dead. "Yeah. I guess that's one more reason for me to give up on being a pilot, isn't it?"

"I didn't say that."

"No, you didn't." He started walking again, eyes forward and chest tight.

There was an awkward silence for several hundred yards round the road, and it wasn't until they came back into sight of Scott's apartment block that Virgil spoke again.

"I didn't mean to imply that less is the answer. We need a different fuel source. That's all I meant."

"Yeah. Sorry." Scott stopped again, and offered his hand. "My career's a sore point right now."

"I noticed." Virgil pointed to the silhouetted figure on the steps of the building, very obviously another military guard complete with rifle. "They've been quick with the security. Do you think he'll let you in?"

"Since I live here, I'd..." Scott's voice trailed off as he dug in his pockets and encountered only the cloth at the bottom. "I don't suppose you picked up my keys on your way to removing us both to the hallway?"

"Strangely, no."

"Shit. How are your lockpicking skills?"

Virgil dug in his own pockets. "Since I'm carrying a wallet and a handkerchief, not so good."

"In that case --" Scott stopped as he recognised the man coming out to speak to the guard, and took off towards the door. "Hey! Frank!"

Both men turned and waited, as he picked his way rather more circumspectly through the rounded ball-bearings of shattered safety glass.

"Can you let me into my apartment?"

"Forgot your key, Captain Tracy?" the building's supervisor laughed.

"My brother shut the door in a big hurry when we realised the tornado was going to hit us."

"It was a tornado, then? Man, that was scary."

Scott managed a grin. "It was a very small tornado."

"You call that small? Look at this mess!"

"I'm from Kansas. That was small. You still have a roof." He considered adding, _which is more than the base nursery does_, but decided it would only worry the man, and there was nothing more that needed doing over there for the time being.

Frank West, San Diego born and bred, as he proudly announced to everyone who moved into the building, gulped in some horror. "I'd sure hate to see a big one. Come with me, Captain. I'll get you the spare key - then you'll want to be getting over to the administration block. They're arranging temporary accommodation until we can get the windows fixed, or at least boarded. I don't know whether they'll be able to find anything for your brother, but you can try."

Scott hung back to ensure that Virgil wasn't stopped by the guard, smiling to himself. If only everyone was like Frank West. The man knew full well who Scott's father was, that he could probably put an entire hotel on his credit card if he chose to - and yet he still treated him just like everyone else in the building, telling him the Air Force would find him a bunk. Because Scott was a pilot, and that was what they were doing for the pilots right now.

Off-base accommodation wasn't as restricted as the airfield itself normally, or, indeed, now. Shortly, Scott and Virgil were heading up the stairs armed with Frank's master key and instructions to bring it right back.

"Oh, man," Virgil said as Scott opened the apartment door. "This is some mess."

Scott walked in, bending down to retrieve a picture from the floor. Glass crunched underfoot - but it was from the window. The glass in his picture frames was near-indestructible, on advice from his father, who'd also spent a career moving from one base to another.

"I needed to start packing up in any case. But - yeah. Hell of a mess."

"Anything gone?"

"Out of the window?" Scott considered the bare shelf, trying to reproduce mentally what might have been on it. He'd never used it for much - it got too hot in the sunshine to keep anything important there. He'd left a photo there and it had faded rather rapidly - a bit like his relationship with the girl in it, really. Grandma had sent him a plant, once, a flowering violet, but the poor thing had fried within days. And he wasn't much of a fan of cacti. There might have been a coffee mug or two there, possibly. "I don't think so. Nothing that mattered."

"That's something, at least." Truth be told, Virgil seemed more concerned about the apartment than he was. Scott really didn't care - of all the places he'd lived, this was the one he'd considered most transitory, that he'd wanted out of. And he wanted out of here now, this minute, glass all over the carpet and living room open to the elements notwithstanding. And not to some assigned bunk, either.

"Give me five minutes to grab some clothes. I'm still on leave. I'm going to a hotel." He glanced sideways. "And I'd really like for you to come with me. I'm not thinking straight here, Virg. I need someone to bounce this off, before I do something real stupid."

Virgil didn't so much as raise an eyebrow. Virgil, utterly dependable, non-judgemental. There when he needed him. It was way past time that he took advantage of having a brother like that, laid all his cards on the table, and asked Virgil what he thought. Because he simply had to do something, and right now all he was managing was to oscillate from one poorly-thought-out option to another.

It was another hour until they finally got the mug of coffee Virgil had started making before the tornado hit. By then they'd shifted everything that mattered in his open-to-the-elements apartment into his windowless bathroom just in case the tornado should have had a friend, used Virgil's now-working cellphone to call a cab to take them to the hotel their father generally used when he was there, checked in (the black credit card and surname of 'Tracy' had procured them a more than adequate two bedroom suite on the top floor) and were sitting sprawled in a pair of leather armchairs positioned conveniently either side of a low table holding a coffee percolator. Scott wasn't quite sure what the concierge had made of him saying he didn't care what room he had, so long as it had two beds and a decent coffee maker, but it had worked.

Virgil absorbed his first mug fast enough to make even Scott cringe, refilled it, downed half of that, and then put it down deliberately. "So. I'm here to be bounced off. What's eating you, Scott? You never even mentioned display team flying before. Alan I could see making that sort of decision on a whim. It's not you at all."

"I know, and that's what scares me." Scott took another swallow of coffee, and forced himself to put his mug alongside Virgil's. He hated to think just how much caffeine he'd been ingesting recently, and it couldn't be good for him. "I can't stay here. I can't get an active duty posting. NASA won't look at me. The civilian test pilot jobs all go to ex military test pilots for the fast stuff, and I'm not a big iron pilot. And Father offered me my dream job."

"Test piloting, or the other?"

Scott grimaced. "We've got to stop skating round the point here, Virg. How much do you know, and how long have you known it?"

"I know Dad wants to start up a rescue team, and that he thinks it needs to be secret. And that there are some kick-ass airframe designs involved. One of them's mine - the big cargo lifter I'm working on. Father had to tell me a year or so back, when I asked his advice on some of the patenting, because I was going to lock it to Tracy Aerospace, and it would have been curtains for his team being anonymous. And, for the record, I only didn't tell you because he promised he was going to eventually. But there's something small and fast involved too, and I'm guessing he's asked you to pilot it and lead his team."

Scott breathed a sigh of relief. No subterfuge involved. Just pretty much what had happened with him: Virgil had been told only when not telling him would have been detrimental. "That's about the sum of it."

"And the problem is?"

"That he offered me the job because I'm his son. I've been fighting that my whole life, Virg."

"It never occurred to you that he asked you because you're the best person for the job?"

"What? A flight instructor who couldn't make test pilot?"

"That isn't your fault and you know it. Dad knows it too."

Scott wasn't aware he'd gone back to the coffee until he caught himself putting down an empty mug. He put his hand over the top as Virgil reached for it to refill it.

"I've had enough. Tell me this, then. How come he only offered it when he found out my career had fallen apart?"

"Because he didn't know how unhappy you were before that. You know you never tell him anything unless you absolutely have to. You sure as hell never whine about your problems. And he'd never have asked you to choose between him and something you loved doing."

Scott looked at him, surprised. "You really do think he's right, don't you?"

"This time, yeah. Besides, having you as the boss has got to have a few perks."

"Oh, so that's it, is it? You think you're going to get away with murder on a daily basis with me in charge?"

Virgil just grinned. Scott stared at his coffee mug for a long moment, his own smile fading. "So, supposing I take it. How will I show my face at an airfield again? I'll have proved them all right."

"You mean the ones who aren't jealous as hell because you get to fly the most modern planes Tracy Aerospace builds? The ones who'd cheerfully drag you into a back alley to get this opportunity? To put it bluntly, Scott, things won't change. You'll get the same crap you've always had about being Jeff Tracy's son. Only at least now you'll also get the upside of it." Virgil paused. "The guy who flies that fast response plane, the one with no name? Him they'll respect. You deserve to be him. Not some display team guy who went there because he couldn't make test pilot."

Scott still didn't look up, and found a cellphone being put in his lap.

"When's the last time you discussed Tracy Aerospace with Father?"

He had no answer.

"You never have, have you? Commercial confidentiality and all that? You've never actually sat down and discussed with him what would happen when. You simply assumed you had no choice but to be mini-Jeff."

Scott just sat and breathed. No, he never had discussed it with Dad, not that he remembered. Discussing it would have meant expressing an interest he didn't want to have. Or have made him choose between a career path he really didn't want and disappointing his father. It had been so much easier for all of them for him to ignore the issue and get on with his Air Force career, just as his father had before him. He was now almost the age his father had been when he had gone to the moon. Only a few years younger than Jeff had been when his wife had died and he'd been forced to give up his own military career. By his age, Jeff had been a father of one, with a second on the way. He _remembered_ his father being only a couple of years older than his current age, when John was born. That horrified him.

"Call him, Scott. Please. Tell him what you want and what you don't, and see whether it lines up with what he wants from you. I'm betting it's pretty darn close. If not, what have you lost? He's not going to sever all ties with you because you tell him you don't want to go corporate. Trust me on that one. I already tried it."

This time he did look up. "You told Father you wanted nothing to do with Tracy Aerospace?"

"He asked me if I would consider overseeing a bunch of research projects for him, at board level. I said no, that I wanted to be doing the designing, not approving it. I don't think he was particularly surprised, or disappointed. He just felt he should ask."

"He offered you board level, and you said no?"

"Yes."

"And he wasn't upset or offended? And he still told you about this rescue team of his? And you're designing something for him? And he's not tried to make you give up your civilian work?"

"No. Yes. Yes. No. Scott, I'm going to make a mistake sooner or later. He's not played the control freak at any point, if that's what you're getting at. He never has. That's your conscience doing that. Not him. And before you ask, Father made me promise not to tell you, because he wanted to do it himself when the time was right."

"I guess we'll have to agree to differ on when the right time was. But you're going to come on board later, be part of his rescue crew? Not just an engineer?"

Virgil grinned. "Like you said, you're no big iron pilot. Who do you think's going to fly my cargo hauler, once she's built?"

Scott shut his eyes. "A family team. You, John and Gordon. Alan?"

"Alan knows nothing. He's just a kid, Scott, even if he is so damned talented it's ridiculous. Much younger than Gordon, more even than his age would suggest. Gordon was serving in WASP, at the age that Alan was a freshman partying in Colorado. He'll be told, when it's the right time for him. This time, we'll make sure it _is_ the right time."

Alan would be told - of course he would. By the time he'd graduated, Father's organisation would be up and running, impossible to hide from someone as bright as he was. Alan would end up flying the silver plane at twenty times the speed of sound. They'd all be involved, except him. And he'd have walked away to some job he didn't even particularly want, too proud to ask whether he could have what he wanted above all else, because of a catch which Virgil said he was only imagining even existed.

Scott Tracy was a proud man. But not too proud to admit he'd made a mistake. He closed his hand round the cellphone and stood up, feeling happier than he had done in a very long time.

"Mind if I borrow this for a few minutes? I need to call Dad and ask for a job."


End file.
